Socialism From The Root Up

or

Socialism Its Growth & Outcome

William Morris and E. Belfort Bax

Socialism From The Root Up was first published in Commonweal, the monthly newspaper of the

Socialist Leauge, in a serialised form during the years of 1886-1888 inclusive.

Socialism From The Root Up contains twenty-five articles tracing the development of society in

brief chapters.

Chapters 1-23 of Socialism From The Root Up was transcribed by Adam Moran for the William

Morris Internet Archive, a subarchive of the Marxists Internet Archive, in July 1998.

The Preface and Introduction were transcribed from the Second Edition of Socialism Its Growth

& Outcome, London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., LTD., New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

1896, for the William Morris Internet Archive by Ted Crawford, in November 2000.

Converted to eBook format by:

Daniel M. Oberhaus

Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3

Chapter 1 - Ancient Society ....................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 2 - Mediæval Society ................................................................................................................. 10

Chapter 3 - The Break-up of Feudalism .................................................................................................. 12

Chapter 4 - Modern Society: Early Stages ............................................................................................... 15

Chapter 5 - Preparing for Revolution - England ...................................................................................... 18

Chapter 6 - Preparing for Revolution - France ........................................................................................ 20

Chapter 7 - The French Revolution: Constitutional Stage ...................................................................... 22

Chapter 8 - The French Revolution: The Proletarian Stage .................................................................... 25

Chapter 9 - The Industrial Revolution in England ................................................................................... 29

Chapter 10 - Political Movements in England ......................................................................................... 33

Chapter 11 - Reaction and Revolution on the Continent........................................................................ 36

Chapter 12 - The Paris Commune of 1871, and the Continental Movement Following It ..................... 38

Chapter 13 - The Utopists: Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier .................................................................. 41

Chapter 14 - The Transition from Utopists to Modern Socialism ........................................................... 44

Chapter 15 - Scientific Socialism - Karl Marx .......................................................................................... 47

Chapter 16 - Scientific Socialism - Karl Marx II Money ........................................................................... 49

Chapter 17 - Scientific Socialism - Conversion of Capital into Money .................................................... 51

Chapter 18 - Scientific Socialism - The Production of Surplus Value - That is, of Rent, Interest, and

Profit ....................................................................................................................................................... 52

Chapter 19 - Scientific Socialism - Constant and Variable Capital .......................................................... 55

Chapter 20 - Marx's Deduction of the Historical Evolution of Modern Industry .................................... 56

Chapter 21 - Scientific Socialism: Conclusion ......................................................................................... 58

Chapter 22 - Socialism Militant [Part 1] .................................................................................................. 61

Chapter 22 - Socialism Militant [Part 2] .................................................................................................. 63

Chapter 23 - Socialism Triumphant [Part 1] ............................................................................................ 65

Chapter 23 - Socialism Triumphant [Part 2] ............................................................................................ 69

Preface

In offering this book to the public, we have to say that we thought it useless to go over the

ground covered by so many treatises on Socialism, large and small, hostile and friendly, that

have appeared of late years. We have dealt with our subject from the historical point of view ;

this, we are aware, is a less exciting method than the building up of "practical" Utopias, or than

attempting the solution of political problems within the immediate purview of the Socialist

struggle of to day. On the other hand, a treatise on abstract economics, furnished with a complete

apparatus of statistics, would have been more congenial to another class of mind. Nevertheless, a

continuous sketch of the development of history in relation to Socialism, even as slight as it is

here, should have its value if efficiently done. Our plan also necessarily deals with the

aspirations of Socialists now living, toward the society of the future.

We have only further to add that the work has been in the true sense of the word a collaboration,

each sentence having been carefully considered by both the authors in common, although now

one, now the other, has had more to do with initial suggestions in different portions of the work.

Introduction

In one of Edgar Allen Poe's tales he recounts how a little group of wrecked seafarers on a water

logged vessel, at the last extremity of starvation, are suddenly made delirious with joy at seeing a

sail approaching them. As she came near them she seemed to be managed strangely and

unseamanly as though she were scarcely steered at all, but come near she did, and their joy was

too great for them to think much of this anomaly. At last they saw the seamen on board of her,

and noted one in the bows especially who seemed to be looking at them with great curiosity,

nodding also as though encouraging them to have patience, and smiling at them constantly,

showing as he did so a set of very white teeth, and apparently so anxious for their safety that he

did not notice that the red cap that he had on his head was falling into the water.

All of a sudden, as the vessel neared them, and while their hearts were leaping with joy at their

now certain deliverance, an inconceivable and horrible stench was wafted to them across the

waters, and presently to their horror and misery they saw that this was a ship of the dead, the

bowing man was a tottering corpse, his red cap a piece of his flesh torn from him by a sea fowl;

his amicable smile was caused by his jaws, denuded of the flesh, showing his white teeth set in a

perpetual grin. So passed the ship of the dead into the landless ocean, leaving the poor wretches

to their despair.

To us Socialists this Ship of the Dead is an image of the civilisation of our epoch, as the cast

away mariners are of the hopes of the humanity entangled in it. The cheerfully bowing man,

whose signs of encouragement and good feeling turn out to be the results of death and

corruption, well betokens to us the much be praised philanthropy of the rich and refined classes

of our Society, which is born of the misery necessary to their very existence. How do people note

eagerly, like Arthur Gordon Pym and his luckless fellows, the beautiful hope of the softening of

life by the cultivation of good feeling, kindness, and gratitude between rich and poor, with its

external manifestations; its missionary enterprises at home and abroad hospitals, churches,

refuges, and the like; its hard working clergy dwelling amidst the wretched homes of those

whose souls they are saving; its elegant and enthusiastic ladies sometimes visiting them; its

dignified, cultivated gentlemen from the universities spreading the influences of a refined home

in every dull half starved parish in England; the thoughtful series of lectures on that virtue of

thrift which the poor can scarcely fail to practise even unpreached to; its increasing sense of the

value of moral purity among those whose surroundings forbid them to understand even the

meaning of physical purity; its scent of indecency in Literature and Art, which would prevent the

publication of any book written out of England or before the middle of the 19th century, and

would reduce painting and sculpture to the production of petticoated dolls without bodies. All

this, which seems so refined and humane, is but the effect of the distant view of the fleshless

grinning skull of civilisation seeming to offer an escape to the helpless castaways, but destined

on its nearer approach to suffocate them with the stench of its corruption, and then to vanish

aimlessly into the void, leaving them weltering on the ocean of life which its false hope has

rendered more dreadful than before.

Let us then go through some of the forms through which this universal hypocrisy of modern

society, which is its special characteristic, manifests itself. Our present family of blood

relationship, based on assumed absolute monogamy, recognises feeble responsibility outside

itself, and professes to regulate the degrees of affection to be felt between different persons

according to the amount of kinship between them, so that, for instance, the brotherhood of blood

would almost extinguish the sense of duty in that other brotherhood of inclination or of mutual

tastes and pursuits, and in fact scarce admit that such ties could be real. Or again, in cases when,

as sometimes happens, the sham blood family is broken into by the adoption of a strange child,

the proceeding is cloaked by change of name, assumption of mystery, and abundance of

unconscious ceremonial; and all this time, though doubtless there are plenty of examples of

disinterested affection between the members of a family, as between those outside of it, yet the

rule is, and our satirists are never tired of playing on this string, that though to a certain extent

the bond of obligation is felt, it is burdensome none the less, and is utterly powerless to prevent

the wrangling and hatred caused by the clashing of the discordant dispositions of persons

doomed always to pose before the world as special friends. Another point to be noticed is the

different way in which family bonds are looked upon amidst different nations even in the circle

of modern Europe. In England it is true, as we have said, that all virtue, honour, and affection are

supposed to be embraced within the pale of the family; this superstition is by no means so strong

in France: nevertheless there is a conventional bond, there, apparently a survival of the tyranny

of the civil law of the Roman Empire, that is much stronger than any family tie in England.. The

family council is submitted to by all Frenchmen and Frenchwomen as a piece of unwritten law

which is inexpugnable: a Frenchman cannot marry without leave of his parents before the age of

twenty five; the relationship of mother and child, which with all exaggerations is more or less

natural in England, is almost sacerdotal in France, and is illuminated by a curious kind of

conventional sentiment in literature, which sometimes fairly degrades for the time even the

greatest authors into the rank of twaddlers. We do not say that a certain amount of sentiment bred

by the family system is not genuine it is reasonable to feel tenderness for the persons who have

taken the pains and trouble of cherishing us in our helplessness, and to wish to pay them back

with some little kindness when we no longer need that care, even when time has shown us to

have no special sympathy for them: not unreasonable too to look with some special sentiment on

brothers and sisters, even when manhood has drifted them away from our lives and their

aspirations, since in years past we were living with them in such familiarity when they and we

were innocent and undeveloped. But what relation does this light and easy yoke of sentiment

bear to the iron chain of conventional sham duty which all of us, even the boldest, are oppressed

by so sorely: a chain too that is broken amidst various circumstances of real and conventional

disgrace whenever necessity, as to day understood, that is, commercial necessity, compels it? In

short, the family professes to exist as affording us a haven of calm and restful affection and the

humanising influences of mutual help and consideration, but it ignores quietly its real reason for

existence, its real aim, namely, protection for individualist property by means of inheritance, and

a nucleus for resistance to the outside world, whether that take the form of other families or the

public weal, such as it may be.

But this shows after all but the best side of the modern conventional family, as it works in the

middle classes. In the lower classes, where the family of blood-relationship might afford some

real protection and help to its members, it is completely broken up by the action of the factory

system, under which father, mother, brothers, sisters, husband, and wife, compete against each

other in the labour market, the end of which is to provide a profit for the capitalist employer; and

this "family," which as now constituted exists for middle class needs, being useless to the

working classes, they have nothing to turn to to supply the lack of a true social unit.

To most men it will be more obvious that similar charges may be brought against the religion of

modern society: most intelligent persons will allow that it means nothing more than mere sets of

names and formulas, to one or other of which every reputable man is supposed to be attached; in

one or other of which he will be sure to find a conventional solution of the great problem of the

universe, including our life and its aspirations. If he fails in his duty to society in this respect he

suffers accordingly; and indeed few men of any position are bold enough to avow that they are

outside all such systems of ecclesiasticism; the very unorthodox must belong to some

acknowledged party they must be orthodox in their unorthodoxy. But as a fact the greater part of

cultivated men dare not go so far as that, and are contented with letting society in general feel

happy in believing that they subscribe to the general grimace of religion that has taken the place

of the real belief, not as yet become a superstition, which allowed practice to be deduced from its

solid dream.

Meanwhile it is common, and especially in the more reactionary circles, to find men who

privately admit a cynicism that to their minds relieves them from any ethical responsibility,

while in public they keep up the farce of supporting a religion that at least professes to have an

ethic of its own.

Yet even now it is necessary that a certain code of morality should be supposed to exist and to

have some relation to the religion which, being the creation of another age, has now become a

sham. With this sham moreover its accompanying morality is also steeped, although it has a use

as serving for a cover of a morality really the birth of the present condition of things, and this is

clung to with a determination or even ferocity natural enough, since its aim is the perpetuation of

individual property in wealth, in workman, in wife, in child.

The so called morality of the present age is simply commercial necessity, masquerading in the

forms of the Christian ethics: for instance, commercial honour is merely the code necessitated

the by needs of men in commercial relations which without it could not subsist, and which has au

fond nothing in common with the Christian "do unto others as thou wouldst," etc., maxim, in the

name of which it is on occasion invoked. The only connection that current commercial ethics has

with the Christian is, as we said above, a purely formal one. The mystical individualist ethics of

Christianity, which had for its supreme end another world and spiritual salvation therein, has

been transformed into an individualist ethic having for its supreme end (tacitly, if not avowedly),

the material salvation of the individual in the commercial battle of this world. This is illustrated

by a predominance amongst the commercial classes of a debased Calvinistic theology, termed

Evangelicalism, 1 which is the only form of religion these classes can understand the poetico

mystical element in the earlier Christianity being eliminated therefrom, and the "natural laws" of

profit and loss, and the devil take the hindmost, which dominate this carnal world, being as

nearly as possible reproduced into the spiritual world of its conception.

It may surprise some to be told that politics share this unreality to the full, since it is generally

supposed that democracy has at last really triumphed and is now entering into its kingdom.

Doubtless the political events of this century have convinced every one that change in the

relations of men to each other is at hand; but before that change can come, it must be understood

that the development of the people must be on other lines than politicians now dream of. It is true

that political freedom is thought to have been gained, but what is the nature of the gain? What is

the end and aim of that political freedom which all parties in the State profess to be striving to

accomplish? Once more it is a sham, designed really to keep the mass of men helpless and

divided, so that they may still be the instruments of the strong and successful. It takes various

forms: for example, the land is to be freed from the last remains of feudality and so become more

completely a mere portion of profit-breeding capital, thus helping the monstrous aggregation of

riches that is reducing all life to a misery. Parents and parsons are to be free to teach children

what they will, thus depriving the unfortunate creatures of the most necessary aids to human

development. Trade and manufacture are to be freed from all trammels, so that the mass of the

people may be compelled to serve the needs, both as producers and as buyers, of those who have

but one object, to sell at a profit.

For the sustaining of this glorious "freedom," otherwise spoken of as the "sanctity of contract,"

government by party is a recognised and effective instrument. In this arrangement the members

of Parliament are divided into two sides, much as lads about to play a game at football; the two

sides do not differ much in their principles, though there is sometimes a violent faction squabble

as to the amount of concession that it is safe to give to or withhold from the demands of the

people: not seldom even this difference does not exist the legislation proposed by both parties is

almost identical, and some safe excuse for quarrel has to be sought for before the game can be

played. Thus is carried out the crowning sham of modern politics under the absurd title of

Representative Government, and the name of democracy is used to cloak an oligarchy more or

less extended, while once more all decent people who may profess an interest in politics are

expected to range themselves under one or other of the great political parties, now become

almost less than mere names, the very shadows of shadows.

When all life, domestic, religious, moral and political, is thus fallen into mere pretence, when all

these branches of men's energy have come to professing aims which, when they have any, are

not their real aims, and on which they will not and cannot act, when they do not know what they

really are and are blind to their real destiny, how can it be possible that Art, the expression of the

life of society, can be otherwise than a sham also? Here and there indeed the irrepressible genius

of an individual expresses itself by dint of toil and anxiety undreamed of in better days, and

produces works of art that are beautiful and powerful, however damaged by the souring effects

of a desperate struggle against monstrous surroundings, and by the restlessness that comes of the

over-exertion even of great powers. But otherwise the fine arts no longer exist for the people at

large. How could they? The one reality of modern society is industrial slavery, far reaching and

intimate, supreme over every man's life, dominating every action of it from the greatest to the

least; no man and no set of men can do anything that does not tend towards the support of this

slavery unless they act as conscious rebels against it. Men living under such conditions cannot

produce social art or architecture (with all that grasp of the decorative cycle of the arts which that

word means, or even desire to do so; they have lost all understanding of what it is ; the mass of

the people have nothing to do with Art architectural except so far as they are compelled to

produce the sham of it mechanically as a trade finish to wares, so as to give them a higher

marketable value. Space fails us here to contrast this condition of things with that of the epochs

that produced Art, or to show the consequences of the difference. Suffice it to say once more

that, except for the very few works produced by men of exceptional genius, which works the

general public does not relish or understand in the least, Art is for the most part dormant.

In this brief review of the various phases of modern life, its family relations, morality, religion,

politics, and art, the reader who has not yet studied socialism may see nothing but pessimism.

For until recently amongst cultivated people, enjoying whatever advantages may be derived from

civilisation, there has been an almost universal belief, not yet much broken into, that modern or

bourgeois civilisation is the final form of human society. Were this the case we should be

pessimists indeed, but happily we know that civilisation is only a stage in the development of the

human race, just as barbarism was, or the savagery of the progressive nations. Civilisation must

of necessity develop into some other form of society, the tendencies of which we can see, but not

the details; for it is now becoming clear that this new state of society can only be reached

through the great economic, moral, and political change which we call Socialism; and the

essential foundation of this is the raising of the working classes to a point that gores them a

control over their own labour and its product.

In order that our readers may get a correct view of this, it is necessary to use the historic method

that is to say, to trace the development of society from its early times up to the full expression of

the commercial period, which has created and is now creating such a vast mass of discontent, not

only amongst the working classes who suffer directly from the oppression that is a necessary part

of it, but also in various and sometimes discordant forms amongst the well to do, who on the face

of things are benefited by its working. We propose to finish the book by goring our own

impressions both of the immediate issue of the present stir and commotion in socio political life,

and also of what may be reasonably expected from the new society when it has at last supplanted

the ever increasing confusion of the present day. Only it must be premised that this last part can

be nothing more than the expression of our own individual views, and that we do not claim any

further weight for it. Although it has been often attempted, it is impossible to build up a scheme

for the society of the future, for no man can really think himself out of his own days; his palace

of days to come can only be constructed from the aspirations forced upon him by his present

surroundings, and from his dreams of the life of past, which themselves cannot fail to be more or

less unsubstantial imaginings.

At least we can boldly assert that those who think that the civilisation of our own time will not be

transformed both in shape and in essence, hold their opinion in the teeth of the witness of all

history. This cannot be set aside by taking refuge in platitudes about "human nature," which are

really deduced from orthodox theology and an obsolete view of history. Human nature is itself a

growth of the ages, and is ever and indefinitely moulded by the conditions under which it finds

itself.

1. If it be said that Evangelicalism is no longer flourishing that is true in the Church of England ;

but the large and exceedingly influential body of dissenters still remains intact.

Chapter 1 - Ancient Society

In beginning this series on Socialism, we think it necessary to prelude the matter which may

appear to interest more immediately us now living, by a brief allusion to the history of the past.

Our adversaries are sometimes forward to remind us that the present system with which we are

so discontented, has been made by the growth of ages, and that our wills are impotent to change

it; they do not see that in stating this fact they are condemning their own position. Our business

is to recognize the coming change, to clear away obstacles to it, to accept it, and to be ready to

organize it in detail. Our opponents, on the contrary, are trying consciously to stay that very

evolution at the point which it has reached to-day; they are attempting to turn the transient into

the eternal; therefore, for them history has no lessons, while to us it gives both encouragement

and warning which we cannot afford to disregard. The hopes for the industrialism of the future

are involved in its struggles in the past; which, indeed, since they have built up the present

system, and placed us amidst its struggle towards change, have really forced us whether we will

it or not, to help forward that change.

The modern civilized State has been developed by the antagonism between individual and social

interests, which has transformed primitive Society into Civilization. The conditions of mere

savage life recognized nothing but the satisfaction of the immediate needs of the individual; this

condition of complete want of co-operation yielded to primitive Communism as the powers of

man grew, and he began to perceive that he could do more than satisfy his daily needs for food

and shelter. By this time he had found that he could aid nature in forcing the earth to produce

livelihood for him; the hill and forest became something more to him than the place where

berries and roots grew, and wild creatures lived, the land became pasture ground to him, and at

last amid some races ground for tillage.

But the wealth of man still grew, and change came again with its growth; the land was common

in the sense that it was not the property of individuals, but it was not common to all comers;

primitive society was formed, and man was no longer a mass of individuals, but the groups of

this primitive society were narrow and exclusive; the unit of Society was the Gens, a group of

blood-relations at peace among themselves, but which group was hostile to all other groups;

within the Gens wealth was common to all its members, without it wealth was prize of war.

This condition of war necessarily developed leadership amongst men; successful warriors gained

predominance over the other members of the Gens, and since the increasing powers of

production afforded more wealth to be disposed of above the mere necessities of each man, these

warrior leaders began to get to themselves larger shares of the wealth than others, and so the

primitive communism of wealth began to be transformed into individual ownership.

The Tribe now took the place of the Gens; this was a larger and more artificial group, in which

blood relationship was conventionally assumed. In it, however, there was by no means mere

individual ownership, although, as said above, Communism had been broken into; the tribe at

large disposed of the use of the land according to certain arbitrary arrangements, but did not

admit ownership in it to individuals. Under the tribal system also slavery was developed, so that

class Society had fairly began (sic).

The Tribe in its turn melted into a larger and still more artificial body, the People -- a congeries

of many tribes, the ancient Gothic-Teutonic name for which -- theoth- is still preserved in such

names as Theobald. This was the last development of Barbarism; nor was there much change in

the conditions of wealth under it from those obtaining among the Tribe, although it held in it

something more than the mere germs of feudalism.

Finally, ancient Barbarism was transformed into ancient Civilization, which, as the name

implies, took the form of the life of the city. With these cities political life began, together with

the systematization of the old beliefs into a regular worship. The religion of Barbarism was the

worship of the ancestors of the tribe, mingled with fetichism, which was the first universal

religion, and may best be described as a state of mind in which the universe was conceived of as

a system of animated beings to be feared and propitiated by man. This was transformed into what

may be called city patriotism, which summed up the whole religion of the city, and which was

the real religion of the Greeks and Romans in their progressive period, and of all the then

progressive races of mankind, including the Hebrew. In these cities slavery speedily developed

until it embraced nearly the whole of industrialism, the main business of the free citizens being

the aggrandizement of their city by war (1)

. For the cities were as hostile to each other as the

tribes had been.

The course of events towards further transformation was that in the East the cities formed

federations which gradually fell under the domination of bureaucratic and absolute monarchies,

of which China still remains as an example. The Greek and Latin cities carried on the progress of

human intelligence, but did not escape corruption and transformation.

Amongst the Greeks the individual struggle for pre-eminence gradually broke down the city

patriotism, and led the way towards the domination of mere military and political intrigue and

confusion, till the independence of Greece was finally trampled out by the power of Rome, now

corrupted also. For during this time in Rome the struggle of the plebeian order -- or inferior

tribes of which the city was composed -- with the conservative oligarchy -- that is, the three most

ancient and consequently leading tribes -- had developed a middle-class living on the profits

derived from slave labour, which broke up the old city republic and led to the formation of a

commercial and tax-gathering empire, founded on slavery, whose subjects were devoid of all

political rights, and in which the triumph of individualism was complete. Indeed, this same

struggle had taken place in one way or another in the Greek cities also. Thus was all public spirit

extinguished. The natural greed of commercialism gradually ate up the wealth of the empire:

even slave labour became unprofitable. The landlords were ruined; the taxes could not be paid;

and meanwhile the Roman soldier, once a citizen religiously devoted to his city, became a bribed

hireling, till at last no bribe was high enough to induce a civilized man to fight, and the Roman

legions were manned by the very barbarians whose kinsmen were attacking the empire from

without.

Thus was ancient civilization delivered over to the Barbarians, fresh from their tribal

communism, and once more the antagonism of individual and common rights was exemplified in

the two streams of Barbarian and Roman ideas, from the union of which was formed the society

of the next great epoch -- the Middle Ages.

1 The Greeks added to this the practice of the higher arts and literature, neither of which the

Romans possessed in their progressive period

Chapter 2 - Mediæval Society

We have now to deal with that Mediæval Society which was based on the fusion of ideas of

tribal communism and Roman individualism and bureaucracy. The fullest, and one may say the

most pedantic type of this society is to be found in the Mediæval German Empire; it was

modified somewhat in other countries; in France by the fact that several of the other potentates,

as, eg., the Duke of Burgundy, were theoretically independent of the King, and practically were

often at least as powerful. In England, on the contrary, the monarchy soon gained complete

predominance over the great barons, and a kind of bureaucracy soon sprang up which interfered

with the full working of the feudal system.

The theory of this feudal system is the existence of an unbroken chain of service from the serf up

to the emperor, and of protection from the emperor down to the serf; it recognizes no absolute

ownership of land; God is the one owner of the earth, the emperor and his kings are his vice-

gerents there, who may devolve their authority to their feudal vassals, and they in turn to theirs,

and so on till it reaches the serf, the proletarian, on whom all this hierarchy lives, and who has no

rights as regard his own lord except protection from others outside the manor that he lives and

works on; to him his personal lord was the incarnation of the compulsion and protection of God,

which all men acknowledged and looked for.

It is quite clear that this system was mixed up with religious ideas of some sort; accordingly, we

find that the Middle Ages had a distinct religion of their own, developed from that early

Christianity which was one of the forces that broke up the Roman Empire. As long as that

Empire lasted in its integrity, Christianity was purely individualistic; it bade every man do his

best for his future in another world, and had no commands to give about the government of this

world except to obey 'the powers that be' in non-religious matters, in order to escape troubles and

complications which might distract his attention from the kingdom of God.

But in Mediæval Christianity, although this idea of individual devotion to the perfection of the

next world still existed, it was kept in the background, and was almost dormant in the presence

of the idea of the Church, which was not merely a link between the earthly and the heavenly

kingdoms, but even may be said to have brought the kingdom of heaven to earth by breathing its

spirit into the temporal power, which it recognized as another manifes-tation of its own authority.

Therefore, the struggles of the Temporal and Spiritual Powers, which form so large a part of the

history of the Middle Ages, were not the result of antagonism of ideas between the two, but came

of the tendency of one side of the great organization of Society to absorb the other without

rejecting its theory; in short, on the one hand the Church was political and social rather than

religious, while on the other the State was at least as much religious as it was political and social.

Such, then, was the theory of Mediæval Society; but apart from whatever of oppression on life

and thought was inherent in it, the practice of the theory was liable to many abuses, to which the

obvious confusion and misery of the times are mostly referable. These abuses again were met by

a protest in the form of almost constant rebellion against Society, of which one may take as

examples the organized vagabondage of Middle Europe, the Jacquerie in France, and in England

what may be called the chronic rebellion of the Foresters, which produced such an impression on

the minds of the people, that it has given birth to the ballad epic known by the name of its

mythical hero, Robin Hood. Resistance to authority and contempt of the 'Rights of Property' are

the leading ideas in this rough but noble poetry.

Besides these irregular protests against the oppression of the epoch, there was another factor at

work in its modifi-cation -- the Gilds, which forced themselves into the system, and were

accepted as a regular part of it.

The ideas which went with the survivals of the primitive communism of the tribes were, on the

one hand, absorbed into the feudal system and formed part of it, but on the other, they developed

associations for mutual protection and help, which at first were merely a kind of benefit societies

according to the ideas of the times. These were followed by associations for the protection of

trade, which were called the gilds-merchant. From these the development was two-fold: they

were partly transformed into the corporations of the free towns, which had already began (sic) to

be founded from other developments, and partly into the craft-gilds, or organizations for the

protection and regulation of handicrafts -- which latter were the result of a radical reform of the

gilds-merchant, accomplished not without a severe struggle, often accompanied by actual and

very bitter war. The last remains of these craft-gilds are traceable in the names of the city

companies of London.

It should be noted that this tendency to association was bitterly opposed in its earlier days by the

potentates of both Church and State, especially in those countries which had been more under the

influence of the Roman empire. But in the long-run it could not be resisted, and at last both the

gilds and the free towns which their emancipated labour had created or developed were favoured

(as well as fleeced) by the bureaucratic kings as a make-weight to the powerful nobles and the

Church.

The condition of one part of mediæval life industrial was thus quite altered. In the earlier Middle

Ages the serf not only did all the field-work, but also most of the handicrafts, which now fell

entirely into the hands of the gilds. It must be noted also that in their best days there were no

mere journeymen in these crafts; a workshop was manned simply by the workman and his

apprentices, who would, when their time was out, become members of the gild like himself:

mastership, in our sense of the word, was unknown.

By about the year 1350 the craft-gilds were fully developed and triumphant; and that date may

conveniently be accepted as the end of the first part of the Middle Ages. By this time serfdom

generally was beginning to yield to the change introduced by the gilds and free towns: the field

serfs partly drifted into the towns and became affiliated to the gilds, and partly became free men,

though living on lands whose tenure was unfree -- copyholders, we should call them. This

movement towards the break-up of serfdom is marked by the peasant's war in England led by

Wat Tyler and John Ball in Kent, and John Litster (dyer) in East Anglia, which was the answer

of the combined yeomen, emancipated and unemancipated serfs, to the attempt of the nobles to

check the movement.

But the development of the craft-gilds and the flocking in of the freed serfs into the towns laid

the foundations for another change in industrialism: with the second part of the mediæval period

appears the journeyman, or so-called free labourer. Besides the craftsmaster and his apprentices,

the workshop now has these 'free labourers' in it -- unprivileged workmen, that is, who were

nevertheless under the domination of the gild, and compelled to affiliation with it. The gildsmen

now began to be privileged workmen; and with them began the foundation of the present middle-

class, whose development from this source went on to meet its other development on the side of

trade which was now becoming noticeable. In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks; the

art of printing was spreading; Greek manuscripts were being discovered and read; a thirst for

new or revived learning, outside the superstitions of the mediæval Church and the quaint,

curiously perverted and half-understood remains of popular traditions, was arising, and all was

getting ready for the transformation of mediæval into modern or commercial society.

Chapter 3 - The Break-up of Feudalism

The period of change from the feudal system into that of commerce is so important, and so

significant to our subject, that it demands a separate chapter.

The beginning of the sixteenth century found, as we have said, the craft-gilds corrupted into

privileged bodies holding within them two orders of workmen -- the privileged and the

unprivileged -- the two forming the germ of a society founded on capital and wage-labour. The

privileged workmen became middle-class; the unprivileged, proletarians.

But apart from the gilds, the two classes were being created by the development of commerce,

which needed them both as instruments for her progress. Mediæval commerce knew nothing of

capitalistic exchange; the demands of local markets were supplied by the direct exchange of the

superfluity of the produce of the various districts and countries. All this was now being changed,

and a world-market was being formed, into which all commodities had to pass; and a huckstering

class grew up for the carrying on of this new commerce, and soon attained to power, amidst the

rapid break-up of the old hierarchical society with its duly ordered grades.

The fall of Constantinople, which was followed in thirty years by the discovery of America, was

a token of this great change. The Mediterranean was no longer the great commercial sea, with

nothing beyond it but a few outlying stations. The towns of Central Europe -- eg., Augsburg,

Nuremburg, Bruges, and the Hanse towns -- were now sharing the market with Venice and

Genoa, the children of Constantinople: there was no longer one great commanding city in

Europe. But it was not only the rise in the commercial towns that was overturning feudal society.

As they conquered their enemy, the feudal nobles, they fell into the clutches of bureaucratic

monarchs, who either seized on them for their own possessions, or used them as tools for their

projects on conquest and centralization. Charles V., eg., played this game through South

Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, and with Venice, under cover of the so-called 'Holy

Roman Empire', while at the same time he had fallen into possession of Spain by marriage; and

disregarding his sham feudal empire, he bent all his efforts into turning these countries into a real

bureaucratic State. In France the last liberties of the towns were crushed out. In England the

plunder of the religious houses enabled Henry VIII to found a new nobility, subservient to his

own absolutism, in place of the ancient feudal nobility destroyed by their late civil war.

Everywhere the modern political bureaucratic nation was being developed. In France the long

and fierce wars of the Burgundian and Armagnac factions gave opportunity for the consolidation

of the monarchy, which was at last effected by Louis XI, the forerunner of the most successful

king of France and the last successful one -- Louis XIV. In England the Wars of the Roses were

not so bitter as the French wars, and the people took small part in them, except as vassals or the

households of the contending nobles; but they nevertheless played their part in the disruption of

feudality, not only by the thinning-out of the nobles slain in battle or on the scaffold, but also by

helping directly to draw England into the world-market.

Under the mediæval system the workmen, protected and oppressed by the lords of the manor and

the gilds, were not available for the needs of commerce. The serfs ate up the part of the produce

spared them by their lords; the gild craftsmen sold the produce of their own hands to their

neighbours without the help of a middle-man. In neither case was there anything left over for the

supply of a great market.

But England, one of the best pasture countries of the world, had in her even then capacities for

profit-grinding, if the tillage system of the manor and the yeoman's holdings could be got rid of.

The landowners, ruined by their long war, saw the demand for English wool, and set themselves

to the task of helping evolution with much of the vigour and unscrupulous pettifogging which

has since won for their race the temporary command of the world-market. The tenants were rack-

rented, the yeomen were expropriated, the labourers driven off the land into the towns, there to

work as 'free' labourers, and England thus contributed her share to commerce, paying for it with

nothing more important than the loss of the rough joviality, plenty, and independence of spirit,

which once attracted the admiration of foreigners more crushed by the feudal system and their

abuses than the English were.

Thus all over Europe commercialism was rising. New needs were being discovered by men who

were gaining fresh mastery over nature, and were set free from old restraints to struggle for

individual pre-eminence. A fresh intelligence and mental energy was shedding its light over the

more sordid side of the period of change. The study of the Greek literature at first hand was

aiding this new intelligence among cultivated men, and also, since they did but half understand

its spirit, was warping their minds into fresh error. Art was no longer religious and simple -- the

harmonious expression of the thought of the people -- but was growing more and more

ambitiously individualistic and arrogant, and at the same time grew more and more retrospective

and tainted with pedantry.

Amidst all this it is clear that the old religion would no longer serve the new spirit of the times.

The Mediæval Church, the kingdom of heaven on earth, in full sympathy with the temporal

hierarchy, in which also every one had his divinely appointed place, and which restricted

commerce and forbade usury, such a Church was no religion for the new commercialism; its

religion must have nothing to do with the business of this world; so the individualist ethics of

Early Christianity, which had been kept in the background during the period of the Mediæval

Church, were once more brought to the front and took the place of the corporate ethics of that

Church, of which each one of the 'faithful' was but a part. Whatever base uses their enthusiasm

was put to by cooler heads, this revived Christianity took a real hold on most of the progressive

minds of the period, especially in the north; so that Protestantism became the real religion of the

epoch, and even permeated Catholicism and gave it whatever true vitality it had; for its political

part was an unreal survival from the Mediæval Church, and whatever of it was of any force

became the mere ally of bureaucracy; a word which applies to the Protestant Churches just as

much as the Catholic; and, in fact, everywhere the new religion became the useful servant of

Commercialism, first by providing a new army of officials always subservient to the authority of

government, and secondly by holding out to the people hopes outside their wretched life on

earth, so as to quiet their discontent by turning their earthly aspirations heavenward. On the one

hand like Early Christianity, it bade let the world alone to compete for the possession of

privilege, and bade the poor pay no heed to the passing oppression of the day, which could not

deprive them of their true reward in another world; but unlike Early Christianity, on the other

hand it shared in the possession of privilege, and actively helped in the oppression which it

counselled the oppressed not to rebel against. But, as a truly distinct and equal power beside the

State, the Church was extinct; it was a mere salaried adjunct of the State. The story, moreover, of

the robbery by private persons of the public property which the Mediæval Church once held, was

a disgraceful one everywhere, but nowhere so disgraceful as in England.

But while modern Europe was developing for itself a new economy, a new religion, and a new

patriotism, the change did not take place without a protest of the disappointed hopes of the

people in the form of fresh rebellion; though it was little heeded amidst the furious wars for the

place and power of kings, and the establishment of political boundaries of the newly made

'nations'. The Peasant War in Germany, and the revolt of the Anabaptists, are, so to say, the

funeral torches of the Middle Ages. The first was much of the nature of other mediæval

insurrections, except that it was fiercer and longer lived; it ends the series of outbreaks which

had been so common in England during the first years of the century. The revolt of the

Anabaptists was an attempt to realize the kingdom of God upon earth literally and simply in a

Communistic Society based on supernaturalism, and was a protest of ignorant and oppressed

men against the hardening of Christianity into bourgeois Protestantism, and of the hardening of

feudal oppression into commercial exploitation.

Thus, then, was the feudal system broken down, to give place to a new world, whose

government, under cover of carrying on the old monarchies and varied classes of feudality, was

employed in one business only, the consolidation and continuance of the absolute property of the

individual. It is true that in carrying out this function, the new society used the forms of the old,

and asserted hereditary rights stiffly enough; but this was only in its transition from the old to the

new. In truth the spirit of the Middle Ages was dead, and its theory of society and authority in

Church and State was gone. The kingdom of heaven of the Mediæval Church had left the earth,

and did not concern itself with its doings except so far as they constituted theological holiness or

sins. God no longer owned the land allowing human beings to use it after a divinely ordained

scheme. It was now the property of the absolute monarch, who might give it to whomsoever he

would; and it was only for a brief space that a dim shadow of feudal responsibility clung to the

landowner.

Serfdom was gone, and the gilds were now but close corporations of privileged workmen, or of

employers of labour. The ordinary workman was now 'free'. That is to say he could work where

and how he pleased, if he could find some one who would set him to work at the price of taking

from him a part of the produce of his labour; which labour was now a commodity to be bought

and sold in the market as the body of the chattel-slave once had been.

Of the working of this new form of privilege and slavery we shall see more in our next chapter.

Chapter 4 - Modern Society: Early Stages

By the beginning of the seventeenth century the centralizing, bureaucratic monarchies were

fairly established: nay, in France at least, they were even showing the birth of modern party-

government, which since - carried on, indeed, under the veil of constitutionalism -- has been the

type of modern government. Richelieu -- the Bismarck of his time and country -- begins the

series of prime ministers or real temporary kings, who govern in the interest of class society, not

much encumbered and a good deal protected by their cloaks, the hereditary formal sham kings.

In England this prime-ministership was more incomplete, though men like Burleigh approached

the type. Elizabeth reduced the Tudor monarchy to an absurdity, a very burlesque of monarchy,

under which flourished rankly an utterly unprincipled and corrupt struggle for the satisfaction of

individual ambition and greed. This grew still more rankly, perhaps, under James I, who added

mere cowardice to all the other vices which are more common to arbitrary high place and power.

As to the condition of the people during the latter years of the sixteenth and beginning of the

seventeenth century, the economical and religious revolution which had taken place had

oppressed them terribly, and the 'free workman' had to feel the full force of the causes which had

presented him with his 'freedom' in the interest of growing commerce. In England, on the one

hand, the expropriation of the yeomanry from the land and the conversion of tillage into pasture

had provided a large population of these free workmen, who, on the other hand, were not

speedily worked up by the still scanty manufactures of the country, but made a sort of semi-

vagabond population, troublesome enough to the upper and middle-classes. The laws made

against these paupers in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI were absolutely ferocious, and

men were hanged out of the way by the thousand.

But in the reign of Elizabeth it was found out that even this was not enough to cure the evil,

which of course had been much aggravated by the suppression of the religious houses, part of

whose function was the housing and feeding of any part of the workmen temporarily displaced.

A Poor Law, therefore, was passed for dealing with this misery, and strange to say, it was far

more humane than might have been expected from the way in which the poor had been dealt

with up to that time; so much so, indeed, that the utilitarian philanthropists of the beginning of

this century felt themselves obliged to deal with it in a very severe way, which left us a Poor Law

as inhumane -- or let us say as cruel -- as could well be. Toward the middle of the seventeenth

century things began to improve with our working population: the growth of the towns

stimulated agriculture, and tillage began to revive again, though of course under the new system

of cultivation for profit. Matters were in fact settling down, and preparing the country by a time

of something like prosperity for the new revolution in industry.

The condition of the people was on the whole worse on the Continent than in England. Serfdom

was by no means extinct in France and, especially, in Germany, and that serfdom was far more

burdensome and searching side by side with the exploitation of the market than it had been in the

feudal period. Other survivals of the mediæval epoch there were also -- eg., in Germany the gilds

had still some life and power, and the people were not utterly divorced from the land as in

England, although the predominant competition of the markets prevented whatever good might

linger in these half-extinct customs from acting for the benefit of the people. At the same time

the populations were crushed by the frightful wars which passed over them - in all which religion

was the immediate excuse.

The first of this series was the war carried on in Holland against the Catholic foreigners -- the

Spaniards -- into whose hands they had been thrown by the family affairs of Charles V. Although

noblemen took up the side of the rebels -- eg., Egmont and Horn, executed for so doing -- this

war was in the main a war of the bourgeois democracy on behalf of Protestantism, embittered by

the feeling of a Teutonic race against a Latinised one. There is to be found in it even some

foretaste of the revolutionary sanscullote element, as shown by the extreme bitterness of the

ruder seafaring population, the men whose hats bore the inscription, 'Better Turk than Pope'.

In Germany the struggle known as the 'Thirty Years' War' was between the great vassals of the

German empire, the shadow of whose former power was used for the aggrandisement of the

house of Charles V, and also for the enforcement of Catholicism on the more northern countries.

It must be remembered, by the way, that these countries were to the full as absolutist as those

which obeyed the bidding of the Emperor. This miserable war, after inflicting the most terrible

suffering on the unhappy people, who were throughout treated with far less mercy and

consideration than if they had been beasts; after having crushed the rising intelligence of

Germany into a condition from which it has only arisen in days close to our own, dribbled out in

a miserable and aimless manner, leaving the limits of Protestant and Catholic pretty much where

it had found them: but it also left the people quite defenceless against their masters, the

bureaucratic kings and knights.

In France this religious struggle took a very bitter form, but it was far more political than in

Germany. The leaders were even prepared to change their creed when driven into a corner -- as

Henry of Navarre at the time of the Massacre of St Bartholomew. In France the popular

sympathy was by no means in favour of Protestantism: the Massacre of St Bartholomew, which

inflicted such a terrible blow on the Hugenot (sic) cause, would otherwise have been hardly

possible. It is true that the great Hugenot (sic) leader, Henry of Navarre, became Hugenot (sic)

king of France, but his accession did not carry with it a triumph as a consequence. Henry had to

abjure Protestantism; a Protestant king of France was impossible.

The great struggle in England came later, and consequently probably the victory was more

decided on the Puritan side. The enthusiasm with which Mary Tudor - 'Bloody Mary' -- was

received, and the Catholic insurrections in the reign of her successor, showed that there was at

first some popular feeling on the Catholic side; but by the time of James I Catholicism was dead

in England. The Book of Sports issued by his Government, which encouraged the people to play

various games on Sunday, was widely received as an outrage on the feelings of the growing

middle-class in town and country; and all was tending towards the irreconcilable quarrel which

took place in the next reign between the Court and the Bourgeoisie, and which was nearly as

much religious as political. For the rest, the Parliamentary party was on the advancing line of

history both as regards politics and religion, and the King's party was simply reactionary; but the

war was at furthest waged by a bourgeois democract, led at first by a constitutional oligarchy

against a nobility inspired by a kind of romantic after-glow of mediæval chivalry. The successful

outcome of the individual ambition of Cromwell extinguished whatever aspirations towards

republicanism were cherished by a few purists, as well as the enthusiasm of the wild sectaries

whose hopes of a rule of saints on the earth were tinged by some kind of communistic ideas;

which were further fore-shadowed by the Levellers, though perverted by the mere asceticism

which they held. Nevertheless, these men may be paralleled to the Anabaptists of Münster,

although the latter were quite mediæval in spirit, and their fanatic religion had little in common

with Puritanism; and though, also, the steady power of bourgeois rule concentrated in

Cromwell's absolutism forbade them any opportunity of approaching even the most temporary

realization of their idea. Meanwhile England was unable to endure the weight of the absolute rule

of Cromwell, lined with fully developed Puritanism, and a few plotters were allowed to restore

the Stuart monarch, under whom the wild religion of the armed men -- the victors over the

nobility of England and their revived sham chivalry -- sank into mere Quakerism, and the

religious war was at end, except for a few smouldering embers among the Cameronians in

Scotland.

Meantime in France the last remnants of the old feudalism struggled in the party warfare of the

'Fronde' against Mazarin and his bureaucracy of simple corruption, till Louis XIV put the coping-

stone on the French monarchy by forcing his nobility, high and low, into the position of his

courtiers, while his minister Colbert developed the monarchy as a tax-gathering machine by the

care and talent with which he fostered the manufactures of France, which just before his time

were at a very low ebb; so that there was no need to touch the revenues of the nobility, who were

free to spend them in dancing attendance on the Court: nay, were not free to do otherwise. The

century began with the French monarchy triumphant over all its great vassals; it finished by

reducing all its vassals, great and small, to the condition of courtiers, with little influence in the

country-side, and diminished rents -- mere absentee landlords of the worst type, endowed with

privileges which could only be exercised at the cost of the starvation of the people and the

exasperation of the Bourgeoisie, who furnished the funds for the Court glory. Everything in

France, therefore, foreshadowed political revolution. What the advancing constitutionalism of

England foreshadowed we shall have to speak of in our next chapter.

Chapter 5 - Preparing for Revolution - England

The English seventeenth century revolution was from the first purely middle-class, and as we

hinted in our last [chapter] it cast off most of its elements of enthusiasm and ideality in

Cromwell's latter days; the burden of the more exalted Puritanism was felt heavily by the nation

and no doubt played its part in the restoration of Monarchy; nor on the other hand was England

at all ripe for Republicanism; and so between these two disgusts it allowed itself to be led back

again into the arms of Monarchy by the military adventurers who had seized on the power which

Cromwell once wielded. But this restoration of the Stuart monarchy was after all but a makeshift

put up with because the defection from the high-strung principle of the earlier period of the

revolution left nothing to take the place of Cromwell's absolutism. The nation was quite out of

sympathy with the Court, which was un-national and Catholic in tendency and quite openly

debauched. The nation itself though it had got rid of the severity of Puritanism was still Puritan,

and welcomed the Sunday Act of Charles II which gave the due legal stamp to Puritanism of the

duller and more respectable kind. And though enthusiastic Puritanism was no longer dominant, it

was not extinct. John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' shines out, though a religious romance,

amidst the dulness of the literature of the time. The Quakers who represented in their beginning

the peaceable and religious side of the Levellers, arose and grew and flourished in spite of

persecution; the Cameronians in Scotland, as we mentioned in our last chapter, made an

ineffectual armed resistance to the dying out of enthusiasm; while across the Atlantic the

descendants of the earlier Puritans carried on an almost theocratic government, which, by the

way be it said, persecuted the Quakers most cruelly. Little by little, however, all that was not

quite commonplace and perfunctory, died out in English Protestantism, and respectable

indifferentism had carried all before it by the end of the century. Politics and religion had no

longer any real bond of union, and the religious side of Puritanism, Evangelicalism, disappears

here, to come to light again in the next century under the leadership of Whitfield.

Yet, such as English Puritanism had become, its respectable, habitual, and formal residuum was

strong enough to resent James the Second's Papistry, and to make its resentment felt; while at the

same time the constitutionalism which began the anti-absolutist opposition in Charles the First's

time, and which had been interrupted by Cromwell's iron and Charles the Second's mud

absolutism, gathered head again and began to take definite form. The Stuart monarchy, with its

'divine right' of absolute sovereignty, was driven from England in the person of James the

Second, and a constitutional king was found in William of Orange, and constitutional party

government began.

Thus, in spite of interruption, was carried out the middle-class revolution in England; like all

other revolutions, it arrived at the point which it really set out to gain; but not until it had shaken

off much which did at one time help forward its progress, and which was and still is mistaken for

an essential part of it. Religious and Republican enthusiasm, although they (and especially the

first) played their part in abolishing the reactionary clogs on the progress of the middle-classes,

had to disappear as elements which would have marred the end proposed by that revolution; to

wit, the creation of an all-powerful middle-class freed from all restrictions that would interfere

with it in its pursuit of individual profit derived from the exploitation of industry.

Thenceforth, till our own times, respectable political life in England is wrapped up in Whiggery;

tinged, indeed, on one side with the last faint remains of feudalism in the form of a quite unreal

sentiment, involving no practical consequences but the acceptance of the name of Tory; and on

the other by as faint a sentiment towards democracy, which was probably rather a traditional

survival of the feeling of the old days of the struggle between King and Parliament, than any

holding out of the hand towards the real democracy which was silently forming underneath the

government of the respectables.

The first part of the eighteenth century, therefore, finds England solid and settled; all the old

elements of disturbance and aspiration hardened into constitutional bureaucracy; religion

recognized as a State formality, but having no influence whatever on the corporate life of the

country, its sole reality a mere personal sentiment, not at all burdensome to the practical business

of life. The embers of the absolutist re-action on the point of extinction, and swept off easily and

even lazily when they make a show of being dangerous; the nobility a mere titled upper order of

the bourgeoisie; the country prosperous, gaining on French and on Dutch in America and India,

and beginning to found its colonial and foreign markets, and its navy beginning to be paramount

on all seas; the working-classes better off than at any time since the fifteenth century. Art if not

actually dead represented by a Court painter or so of ugly ladies and stupid gentlemen, and

literature by a few word-spinning essayists and prosaic versifiers, priding themselves on a well-

bred contempt for whatever was manly, passionate, or elevating in the wealth of the past of their

own language.

Here then in England we may begin to see what the extinction of feudality was to end in.

Mediæval England is gone, the manners and ways of thought of the people are utterly changed;

they are called English, but they are another people from that which dwelt in England when

'forestalling and regratting' were misdemeanours; when the gild ruled over the production of

goods and division of labour was not yet; when both in art and literature the people had their

share, -- nay, when what of both there was, was produced by the people themselves. Gone also is

militant Puritanism, buried deep under mountains of cool formality. England is bourgeois and

successful throughout its whole life; without aspirations, for its self-satisfaction is too complete

for any, yet gathering force for development of a new kind, -- as it were a nation taking breath

for a new spring; for under its prosperous self-satisfaction lies the birth of a great change -- a

revolution in industry -- and England is at the time we are writing of simply preparing herself for

that change. Her prosperity and solid bureaucratic constitutional government -- nay, even the

commonplace conditions of life in the country, are enabling her to turn all her attention towards

this change, and the development of the natural resources in which she is so rich. The fall of the

feudal system, the invasion of the individualist method of producing goods, and of simple

exchange of commodities, were bound to lead to the final development of the epoch -- the rise of

the great machine industries -- and now the time for that development is at hand. The growing

world-market is demanding more than the transitional methods of production can supply. In

matters political prejudice is giving way to necessity, and all obstacles are being rapidly cleared

away before the advent of a new epoch for labour; of which, indeed, we may say that if no great

change were at hand for it in its turn, it would have been the greatest disaster which has ever

happened to the race of man. In our next chapter we shall deal with the elements at work in

preparing the transformation of the commercial system, for which this development of the great

machine industry was so necessary and so mighty a servant.

Chapter 6 - Preparing for Revolution - France

As we have said, Louis XIV succeeded in making the French monarchy a pure autocratic

bureaucracy, completely centralised in the person of the monarch. This with an ambitious king

like Louis XIV involved constant war, for he felt himself bound to satisfy his ideal of the

necessary expansion of the territory and influence of France, which he looked upon as the

absolute property of the king. The general success of Louis XIV brought with it the success of

these wars of aggrandisment, and France became very powerful under his rule. Under the rule of

his minister Colbert industrialism in France became completely commercialized. Colbert spared

no pains or energy in bringing this about. Often, with more or less success, he drove an industry

forward artificially, as with the silk and woollen manufactures. For he was eager to win for

France a foremost place in the world-market, which he thought but the due accompaniment of

her monarchial glory; and he knew that without it that glory would have died of starvation, since

the taxes would not have yielded the necessary food. It is true that even in England growing

commercialism was subordinate to constitutionalism, the English form of bureaucracy; but the

idea was already afoot there that the former was rather an end than a means, whereas in France

commercialism was completely subordinated to the glory of the autocratic monarchy -- a mere

feeder of it.

The religion of this period of the 'Grand Monarque' shows little more than an ecclesiastical

struggle between Gallicanism on the one hand, which claimed a feeble spark of independence as

regards Rome for the French Church, and is represented by Fénélon and Bossuet, and Jesuitry on

the other hand, which was the exponent of Roman central ization. The leading intelligence of the

time was on the Gallican side; but the king in the long run favoured the Jesuits, as being the

readier instruments of his bureaucratic rule. Outside this ecclesiastical quarrel there was no life

whatever in religion, except what was shown by the existence of a few erratic sects of mystics,

confined to cultivated persons like the Quietists and Jansenists. The former of these may be said

to have put forward the complete abnegation of humanity in the presence of God, while the latter

attempted a revivification of the pietism of the Catholic Church.

The Regency which succeeded to the reign of Louis XIV saw the definite beginnings of the last

corruption which betokened the Revolution. The wars of aggrandizement still went on but were

now generally unsuccessful; the industrialism set a-going by Colbert went on steadily, but the

profits to be gained by it did not satisfy the more adventurous spirit of the period, and the

Regency saw a curious exposition of stock-jobbery before its time in the form of the Mississippi

scheme of Law, which had its counterpart in England in the South-Sea Bubble. It was a financing

operation -- an attempt to get something out of nothing -- founded on the mercantile theory of

economy then current, which showed but an imperfect knowledge of the industrial revolution

beginning under men's very eyes, and assumed that the wealth of a country consists in the

amount of the precious metals which it can retain. This assumption, by the way, is curiously

exemplified in the half-commercial half-buccaneering romances of Daniel Defoe, whose works

we should have mentioned in our last chapter as a relief to the monotony of dulness of eighteenth

century literature in England.

It is necessary to say something about the literature and art of this period that goes before the

Revolution in France, because that country is the especial exponent, particularly in art, of the

degradation which indicated the rottenness of society. As in England, literature was formal and

stilted, and produced little except worthlessly clever essays and still more worthless verses that

have no claim to be called poetry. The French verse-makers, however, aimed at something

higher than the English, and produced works which depend on pomp and style for any claim to

attention they may have, and for the rest are unreal and lifeless. Amidst them all one name stands

forward as representing some reality -- Molière, to wit. But the life and genuineness of his

comedies serve to show the corruption of the times as clearly as the dead classicalism of Racine;

for this, the one man of genius of the time, was driven into the expression of mere cynicism;

though in one remarkable passage of his works he shows a sympathy for the ballad-poetry of the

people, which, when noticed at all in England at the same period, and even much latter, received

a kind of indulgent patronage rather than admiration. At the same time as there was a sham

tragedy current at this time, so also there was a sham love of simplicity. The ladies and

gentlemen of the period ignored the real peasants who were the miserable slaves of the French

landlords, and invented in their dramas, poems, and pictures sham shepherds and peasants, who

were bundles of conscious unreality, inane imitations of the later classics. This literature and art

would be indeed too contemptible for mention, if it were not a sign of a society rotting into

revolution.

The fine arts, which had in the end of the sixteenth century descended from the expression of the

people's faith and aspirations into that of the fancy, ingenuity, and whim of gifted individuals,

fell lower still. They lost every atom of beauty and dignity, and retained little even of the

ingenuity of the earlier Renaissance, and became mere expensive and pretentious though

carefully finished upholstery, mere adjuncts of pomp and state, the expression of the insolence of

riches and the complacency of respectability. Once again it must be said of the art as of the

general literature of the period, that no reasonable man could even bestow a passing glance at

them but for the incurable corruption of Society which they betokened.

So the time wore away through the disgraceful years of the Regency and of Louis XV, till the

accession of the once Dauphin, now Louis XVI, to the throne, which was hailed as a new era by

the respectability of France; and was, indeed, the inauguration of a new era undreamed of by the

actors in it. Of the conscious hopes and aims which came to the surface with this change, there

were indications in the opposition of the higher bourgeoisie to the whimsical and scandalous

courtesan-Absolutism, the rule of the Pompadours and Dubarrys, which was predominant under

Louis XV, this opposition took the form, amongst others, of the assertion of the formal legal

rights of Parliament so- called, which in France was but a privileged body of lawyers,

representative of nothing but the crystalization (sic) of the abuses of a sham feudality, but which,

nevertheless, both under Louis XV and his successor, found itself put forward as a champion of

the respectability of Bourgeoisedom against the rampant corruption of the Court. But on the

accession of Louis XVI this tendency of respectability to assert itself received fresh impulse, and

took a more definite form, and became almost a party in the country, though it had no chance of

exercising any direct influence on the government, which was a mere mass of abuses. This

respectable reforming party, although for the most part outwardly orthodox, amongst themselves

professed materialism and the worship of reason, and was inspired by a bourgeois

humanitarianism which was its most genuine side, and which was largely fed, if not created, by

the writings of Voltaire, and still more of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Diderot. This party was a

most important element amidst the causes of the revolution; it rallied to it all who had any

pretence to cultivated progress, and though it meant nothing but intelligent Conservativism, it

formed a screen as it were behind which the true revolutionary forces could gather for the attack

on privilege. Its formation was the last sign of the approaching end of the absolutist bureaucracy

which was, so to say, propped up by the bodies of its former enemies which it had triumphed

over, the feudal rights of the older nobility. That great French centralized monarchy had been a

long time ripening, but once ripe it decayed very speedily, and no wonder since it was the

corruption of a corruption.

Here, then, we have in France a contrast to the state of things in England. No constitutionalism

here; an absolutism despised even by the privileged classes; unable to move in the direction of

progress, even when, as in the case of Louis XVI, its head has a tendency to the intelligent

conservatism above mentioned; bankrupt also amidst a people broken down, and a commerce

hampered by the exactions of the hereditary privilege which is its sole support, discredited by

unsuccessful wars, so that the door is shut to its ambition in that road; at home it has to face

uneasily the new abstract ideas of liberty and the rights of men. These ideas are professed,

indeed, by those who have an interest in preserving the present state of things, but are listened to

and pondered by people who find that state of things unbearable. In short, while England, at

peace at home and prosperous under reasonable conservatism, is forced to be seeking colonies

and markets abroad, while within her own bounds industrialism is quietly developing toward the

great change, France, driven back on herself, is forced face to face with the elements of violent

change at home; on the one hand bankruptcy and deadlock, on the other intellectual activity

directed wholly towards theories of material well-being of a well-to-do-class. And at the back of

all a commercial bourgeoisie oppressed by privilege, and a miserable proletariat of mere

starvelings. From such elements political revolution must be born.

Chapter 7 - The French Revolution: Constitutional Stage

The bankruptcy towards which France was staggering under the régime of an untaxed privileged

noblesse drove the Court into the dangerous step of attempting to do something, and after

desperate efforts to carry on the old corruption by means of mere financing operations, under

Calonne and others, aided by an assembly of the 'Notables', or kind of irregular taxing council,

the Court was at last, on the 4th May, 1789, compelled to summon the States-General, a body

which was pretty much analogous to a Parliament of our mediæval kings, that is a kind of taxing

machine, but which attempted to sell its granting of taxes to the king for redress of certain

grievances. This States-General had not met since 1614. Bickering between the three houses,

Clergy, Noblesse, and Commons, immediately began, but the latter, which was middle-class in

spirit though including some of the lower nobility, gave tokens of its coming predominance from

the first. On the 20th of June the Court attempted a coup d'état, and the Third Estate held its

celebrated session in the Tennis Court, and so broke with the old feudal idea, and became a

constitutional 'National Assembly', the Court making but a feeble resistance at the time.

It, nevertheless, was contemplating forcible measures against what had now become the National

Assembly, when on the 14th July came the first stroke of the popular insurrection which the

bourgeois began by accepting as an ally of its revolution, which so far had gone wholly on

constitutional lines; this was the taking of the Bastille by the people, and the slaying of De

Launay the Governor, and Flesselles the Provost of the merchants. The Court gave way at once;

the king visited Paris as a sign of submission, and certain of the higher nobility fled from the

coming ruin. Two typical feudal fleecers, Foulon and Berthier, were afterwards hung by the

people.

The ground thus cleared for it, the Constitutional Revolution went on apace; feudal titles were

abolished, the Church reduced to a salaried official department; the very geography of the

country was changed, the old provinces with their historic names abolished, and France divided

into eighty-three departments named after the rivers and other natural features; everything was to

be reduced to a pattern [of] constitutional centralized bourgeois bureaucracy.

But the other element of revolution was also stirring. The alliance of the mere starvelings could

not be done without by the bourgeoisie, and they had it whether they would or no. A Jacquerie

had arisen in the country, and armed peasants everywhere burned the chateaux or country-

houses of the gentlemen, and hunted away their occupants. The Revolution was necessarily

accompanied by the dislocation of all industry, and the scarcity was bitterly felt everywhere.

In the midst of this the Court, recovering from the first blow of the taking of the Bastille, began

to plot counter- revolution, and devised a scheme for getting the king away from Versailles to

Rouen or elsewhere, and putting him at the head of a reactionary army and an opposition

reactionary assembly. A banquet given by the Court to a regiment supposed to be loyal,

practically exposed this plot, and amidst all the terror and irritation which it gave rise to, a

popular rising headed by the famous march of the women on Versailles, came to the aid of the

Assembly, and forced the king to go to Paris and take up his abode at the Tuilleries (sic). In this

affair the mere Sansculotte element became very obvious. It was stirred up by the artificial

famine caused by the financial and stock-jobbing operations of the Court and of private persons;

the popular middle-class Minister, Necker, having been the immediate cause of it by his issue of

small paper money. And it was opposed by the Bourgeois soldiery, the National Guard, headed

by Lafayette, who was the very embodiment of the Constitutional Revolution. This was followed

by a further flight of the noblesse and higher bourgeoisie from France, which, as it were, gave a

token of the complete victory of Constitutionalism over the Court party.

For some time the king carried on a struggle against the victorious bourgeoisie, apparently

unconscious of its extreme hopelessness; while the bourgeois Government for its part was quite

prepared to put down any popular movement, all the more as it now had a formidable army in the

shape of the National Guard. But by this time there had arisen a kind of People's Parliament

outside the Assembly, the famous Jacobins Club and the Cordelier Club to wit, and the sky was

darkening over for triumphant Constitutionalism.

That triumph was celebrated by the great feast of the Champ de Mars, July 13th, 1790, when the

king in the presence of delegates from all France swore to the Constitution. But Royalist plots

went on all the same, and settled down at last into a fixed conclusion of the flight of the king to

the northern frontier, where were the remains of what regular army could be depended on, with

the threatening Austrian troops at their back. As a trial the king attempted at Easter to get as far

as St Cloud, announcing his determination as a matter of course; but he was stopped by a mixed

crowd not wholly Sansculotte, though Lafayette did his best to help royalty turned respectable, in

the pinch. At last on the 20th June, the king and the royal family made the great attempt, in

which they would most probably have succeeded, if they had not hampered themselves with all

kinds of absurd appliances of wealth and luxury, and if they had had any idea of the kind of stake

they were playing for. As it was in spite of, or perhaps partly because of, their having arranged

for various detachments of troops to meet them on the way as escorts, they were stopped at the

little town of Varennes and brought back again to Paris. It was a token of the progress of ideas,

that by this time the king's presence in Paris was looked at from a two-fold point of view. By the

pure constitutionalists as the necessary coping-stone to the Constitution, without which it could

not stand; but by the revolutionists as a hostage held by the French people in the face of hostile

reactionary Europe. Also now the word Republic was first put forward, and at last it became

clear that there were two parties amongst those who were making the Constitution, the

Constitutional Royalists and the Republicans.

The latter were supported by the people, who flooded the Assembly with petitions for the

deposition of the king; the Assembly decided against it on the ground of the legal fiction familiar

to the anti-Royalist party in our Parliamentary wars, that the king had been carried off by evil

and traitorous councillors. But the split between the parties was emphasized by bloodshed. A

Jacobin petition lay for signature on the Altar of the Country in the Champ de Mars, and great

crowds were about it signing and looking on. In the evening, Lafayette marched on the Champ

de Mars with a body of National Guards, proclaimed martial law by the hoisting of the red flag,

according to a recently made enactment, and finally fired on the people, killing many of them.

But in spite of this 'massacre of the Champ de Mars', as it was called, the Constitutionalists

triumphed for the time. The National Assembly completed its work, and produced a Constitution

wholly Bourgeois and even Monarchical, which was accepted by the King amidst one of those

curious outbursts of sentiment of which the epoch was so fruitful, and which generalry as on this

occasion included the exhibition of the little Dauphin in the arms of his mother to the crowd. The

National Assembly dissolved itself after enacting that none of its members could be elected to

the new legislative body or first Parliament of the Revolution. Of this Legislative the bourgeois

Republicans, the aristocracy of talent, became apparently far the most powerful party; whatever

there was of talent that had frankly accepted the alliance of the Sansculottes was outside the

Legislative. But another element was now added to the contest, that of foreign war, Austria

beginning the attack. The obvious and necessary sympathy of the king and Court with what had

now become their only chance of salvation, was met by the equally necessary terror and

indignation of the revolutionists of all shades, which of course strengthened the extreme party,

who had everything to lose from the success of a foreign invasion. In spite of this, the king

driven into a corner was in constant contention with the Legislative, and used his constitutional

right of veto freely, yet was driven to accept a revolutionary Ministry with Roland at its head: but

as the hope of deliverance from the invasion grew on him he dismissed it again, and the Court

found itself ticketted (sic) with the name of the Austrian Committee. On the 20th June, the

populace expressed themselves clearly enough by invading the Tuileries itself, and for a brief

space it seemed as if the monarchy was doomed to end there and then; but as there was no

resistance it ended with a mere demonstration.

Nevertheless, the end of the Constitutional Revolution was at hand. Lafayette, quite

misunderstanding his strength, left the army, and tried to stir up the Constitutionalists to attack

the Jacobins, but failed ignominiously, and presently fled the country. The King once more

swearing to the Constitution at the Feast of the Federates, wore armour underneath his clothes,

and insurrection was obviously brewing. On the 10th August it came. Whatever Royalist force

was available was collected in the Palace of the Tuileries, including the Swiss Guard; and a

desperate resistance was prepared for with the faint hope of the king being able to cut himself out

and reach the frontier; but those Constitutionalists who had any intention of supporting the king

found their hearts failing them, and even the 'constitutional' battalions of the National Guard

were prepared to take the popular side. The king and royal family left the Tuileries for the

Legislative, leaving no orders to the unlucky Swiss, who with mechanical military courage stood

their ground. The insurrectionary sections attacked the Tuileries and carried it, though not

without heavy loss -- 1200 killed, the Swiss being all slain except a few who were carried off to

prison. On the 13th August, the king and his family were bestowed as prisoners in the Temple,

and the first act of the Revolution had come to an end.

Chapter 8 - The French Revolution: The Proletarian Stage

The insurrection of the 10th August, which culminated in the final downfall of the monarchy and

the imprisonment of the king and royal family in the Temple, was headed and organized by a

new body definitely revolutionary, intended to be the expression of the power of the proletariat,

the new Commune of Paris, the moving spirit of which was Marat, who even had a seat of

honour assigned to him in the Council. Already, before the king had been sent to the Temple, the

Girondin Vergniaud, as president, had moved the suspension of the 'hereditary representative'

and the summoning of a national convention. Danton was made minister of justice; Robespierre

was on the Council of the Commune. A new Court of Criminal Justice was established for the

trial of the crimes of August 10th. The members of the Convention were chosen by double

election, but the property qualification of 'active and passive citizens' was done away with.

While all this was going on, the movement of the reactionary armies on France was still afoot;

and the furious flame of French national enthusiasm, which was afterwards used by the mere

self-seeking conqueror Napoleon, was lighted by the necessity of the moment -- not to be

extinguished in days long after his. We mention this here because, in order to appreciate what

follows, it must be remembered that an armed coalition of the absolutist countries was gathering

together, threatening to drown the Revolution in the blood of the French people, and especially

of the people of Paris; and that one of its armies, commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, a

famous general of Frederick the Great, was already within a few days' march of the city; and that

nothing was between Paris and destruction but undisciplined levies and the rags of the neglected

army formed under the old régime; while at the same time the famous royalist insurrection had

broken out in La Vendée. Every republican in Paris, therefore, had good reason to feel that both

his own life and the future of his country were in immediate danger at the hands of those who did

not care what became of France and her people so long as the monarchy could be restored.

Danton now demanded a search for arms, which was carried out on August 29th; and the prisons

were filled with prisoners suspected of royalist plotting, and many of them surely guilty of it.

Verdun fell on the 2nd September, and the Duke of Brunswick boasted that he would presently

dine in Paris; and on the same night insurrectionary courts of justice -- Lynch-law, as we should

call it now -- were established at the prisons, and the prisoners were brought before them and

judged. If found guilty they were turned out into the street with the words, 'Let the prisoner be

enlarged', or, 'Let him be conducted to La Force' or 'the Abbaye', according to whether he was at

one or the other. He was then immediately cut down and slain by a body of men waiting for him.

If he was acquitted, the word went, 'Let him be enlarged', with the cry of 'Vive la nation!' and he

went free. It should be noted, in order to show the hysterical excitement amidst which all this

was done, that the acquittals were greeted with cries of joy, tears, and embraces on the part of the

court and its sympathizers. It may be further noted that the watches, rings, etc., of the slain were

brought to the town-hall by the slayers, who claimed each a louis (20s.) for their night's work.

The number of the slain was one thousand and eighty-nine.

The next day a circular was issued by the Committee of Public Safety approving of the massacre,

signed by Sergent, Panis (Danton's friend), and Marat, with seven others.

The Girondins in the Assembly and elsewhere kept quiet for the time, though they afterwards

used the event against the Jacobins.

Meanwhile the French army, under Dumouriez, had seized on the woodland hills of the Argonne,

checked Brunswick, defeated him at Valmy, and Paris was saved.

The Convention now met -- on the 20th September -- and the parties of the Girondins and the

Mountain, or extreme revolutionists, were at once formed in it. It is noteworthy that while it

declared as its foundation the sovereignty of the people and the abolition of royalty, it also

decreed that landed and other property was sacred for ever. Apropos of which, it may here be

mentioned that the bookseller Memoro, having hinted at something like agrarian law, and some

faint shadow of Socialism, had to go into hiding to avoid hanging.

So far, therefore, we have got no further than the complete triumph of bourgeois republicanism;

though, indeed, the possibility of its retaining its position depended, as the event showed, on the

support of the proletariat, which was only given on the terms that the material condition of the

workers should be altered for the better by the new régime. And those terms, in the long-run,

bourgeois republicanism could not keep, and therefore it fell.

The Girondins or moderate party in the Convention, began their attack on the Jacobins on the

subject of the September massacres, and also by attacking Marat personally (on the 21st

September) -- which attack, however, failed egregiously. The Girondins, as their name implies,

leaned on the support of the provinces, where respectability was stronger than in Paris, and tried

to levy a body-guard for the defence of the Convention against the Paris populace; but though

they got the decree for it passed, they could not carry it out. In their character of political

economists, also, they resisted the imposing a maximum price on grain, a measure which the

scarcity caused by the general disturbance made imperative, if the proletariat were to have any

share in the advantages of the Revolution. In short, the Girondins were obviously out of

sympathy with the mass of the people -- the only power that can support revolutionists; therefore,

though they were posing as supporters of the rights of the people, they were bound to fall.

The trial of the king now came on, and tested the Girondins in a fresh way; they mostly voted his

death, but as if driven to do so from a feeling that opinion was against them, and that they might

as well have some credit for this. The king was beheaded on January 21st, 1793, and as an

immediate consequence, England and Spain declared war. But this business of the king made a

kind of truce between the parties, which, however, soon came to an end. Marat was the great

object of attack, and on the 25th February, 1793, he was decreed accused on account of some

passages in his journal approving of the bread riots which had taken place, and suggesting the

hanging of a forestaller or two. On the other hand, on the 10th of March, the section Bonconseil

demanded the arrest of the prominent Girondins. Meantime, Danton had been trying all along to

keep the peace between the two parties, but on April 1st, the Girondins accused him of

complicity with Dumouriez, who had now fled over the frontier, and so forced him into

becoming one of their most energetic enemies. The position of the Girondins was now desperate.

On the 24th March, Marat was acquitted and brought back in triumph to the Convention.

The Girondins got appointed a packed committee of twelve in the interest of the Convention as

against the Paris sections. As an answer to this a central committee of the sections was formed,

which on May 31st dominated the Municipality (not loth to be so dealt with) and surrounded the

Convention with troops. After an attempt on the part of the Girondins to assert their freedom of

action, the Convention decreed them accused and they were put under arrest. They died

afterwards, some by the guillotine, some even more miserably, within a few months; but their

party is at an end from this date. All that happened in the Convention from this time to the fall of

Robespierre in 'Thermidor' was the work of a few revolutionists, each trying to keep level with

the proletarian instinct, and each failing in turn. They had not the key to the great secret; they

were still bourgeois, and still supposed that there must necessarily be a propertyless proletariat

led by [the] bourgeois, or at least served by them; they had not conceived the idea of the

extinction of classes, and the organization of the people itself for its own ends.

Marat's death at the hand of Charlotte Corday, on July 14th, removed the only real rival to

Robespierre, the only man who might, perhaps, have made Napoleonism unnecessary.

The law of maximum was now passed, however, and a cumulative income tax, so that, as Carlyle

remarks, the workman was at least better off under the Terror than he had ever been before; but

without a direct attack on the root of exploitation there can be no true equality, and nothing that

can be laid hold of as a principle of Society; the people cannot understand, and therefore cannot

themselves organize themselves. Until labour is free, it has to be organized by those who are the

masters of the labourers, and the revolutionists of this period were at once too good and too bad

to be their masters; therefore, as above said, they could only drift on the current of events.

Robespierre, Danton, and the Herbertists were now what of force was left in the Convention, and

doubtless the first of these had made up his mind to get the reins of power into his own hands.

Meantime, a new calendar, in which the months were distinguished by names taken from the

march of the natural drama of the year, was published, and an attempt was made to establish a

new worship founded on Materialism; but, like all such artificial attempts to establish what is

naturally the long growth of time, it failed. Chaumette, Hebert and their followers were the

leaders in this business, which Robespierre disapproved of, and Danton growled at.

The Extraordinary Tribunal under Fouquier Tinville was now the Executive in Paris, and backed

by the law of suspects, speedily got rid of all obstacles to the Revolution, and of many also who

had worked according to their lights for its furtherance. Robespierre, it is hard to say how or

why, became at last practical dictator.

The Herbertists under the name of the 'Enragés' (rabids) were accused at Robespierre's instance,

found guilty and executed. Danton, giving way it would seem to some impulse towards laziness

inherent in his nature, let himself be crushed, and died along with Camille Desmoulins on 31st of

March, 1794, and at last Robespierre was both in reality and appearance supreme. On the 8th of

June he inaugurated his new worship by his feast of the Supreme Being, but did not follow it up

by any diminution in the number of batches for the guillotine; and ominous grumblings began to

be heard. According to a story current, Carnot got by accident at a list of 40 to be arrested,

among whom he read his own name. On the 26th July, Robespierre was met by unexpected

opposition in the Convention. The next day he was decreed accused at the Convention, and

Henriot deposed from the commandership of the National Guard; but there was a respite which a

more ready man, a man of military instinct at least, might have used [but] Robespierre lacked

that instinct; [and] Henriot failed miserably in his attempt to crush the Convention. The

insurrectionary troops on being appealed to by the Convention, wavered and gave way, and

Robespierre was arrested. In fact, Robespierre seems to have worn out the patience of the people

by his continued executions. Had he proclaimed an amnesty after his Feast of the Supreme

Being, he would have had a much longer lease of power; as it was he and his tail died on the 28th

July(1)

.

There was nothing left to carry on the Revolution after this but a knot of self-seeking politicians

of the usual type; they had only to keep matters going till they were ready for the dictator who

could organize for his own purposes people and army, and who came in the shape of Napoleon.

The proletarians were no longer needed as allies, and disunited, ignorant of principles, and used

to trust to leaders, they could make no head against the Society which they had shaken indeed,

owing to its internal dissensions, but which they were not yet able to destroy.

One event only there remains to be mentioned; the attempt of Baboeuf and his followers to get a

proletarian republic recognized; it has been called an insurrection, but it never came to that,

being crushed while it was yet only the beginning of a propaganda. Baboeuf and his followers

were brought to trial in April, 1796. He and Darthes were condemned to death, but killed

themselves before the sentence could be carried out. Ten others were condemned to prison and

exile; and so ended the first Socialist propaganda.

It is commonly said that Napoleon crushed the Revolution, but what he really did was to put on it

the final seal of law and order. The Revolution was set on foot by the middle-classes in their own

interests; the sentence which Napoleon accepted as the expression of his aims, 'la carrière

ouverte aux talens' -- 'the career thrown open to talent' -- is the motto of middle-class supremacy.

It implies the overthrow of aristocratic privilege and the setting up in its place of the money-

aristocracy, founded on the privilege of exploitation, amidst a world of so-called 'free

competitions. The Middle-class, the first beginnings of which we saw formed in the Middle

Ages, after a long and violent struggle has conquered and is supreme from henceforth.

1 A curious exemplification of the change in the speed of the transmission of news, is given by

the fact that The Times published the first news of this fall of Robespierre three weeks after the

event.back

Chapter 9 - The Industrial Revolution in England

In our last two chapters we had to deal with a revolution which was as rich in dramatic interest,

and as obviously so, as any period in the history of the world. We have now to note a series of

events the well-spring of which was Great Britain. This series is not usually connected by

modern historians so as to be dignified by the name of a Revolution; but it is one nevertheless,

and is at least as important in its bearing on the life of the modern world as that more startling

and, on the surface, more terrible one in France.

In the last chapter wherein the condition of England was dealt with, we left it a prosperous

country, in the ordinary sense of the word, under the rule of an orderly constitutionalism. There

was no need here for the violent destruction of aristocratic privilege; it was of itself melting into

money-privilege, and all was getting ready for the completest and securest system of the plunder

of labour which the world had yet seen.

England was free in the bourgeois sense; that is, there were but a few checks, the survivals of

earlier periods, to interfere with the exaction of the tribute which labour has to pay to property to

be allowed to live. In a word, on the one hand exploitation was veiled; and on the other, the

owners of property had no longer any duties to perform in return for the above-said tribute.

Nevertheless, all this had to go on on a small scale for a while. Population had not increased

largely since the beginning of the seventeenth century; agriculture was flourishing; one-thirtieth

of the grain raised was exported from England; the working-classes were not hard pressed, and

could not yet be bought and sold in masses. There were no large manufacturing towns, and no

need for them; the presence of the material to be worked up, rather than the means for working it

mechanically -- fuel, to wit -- gave a manufacturing character to this or that country-side. It was,

for example, the sheep-pastures of the Yorkshire hill-sides, and not the existence of coal beneath

them, which made the neighbourhood of the (sic) northern Bradford a weaving country. Its

namesake on the Wiltshire Avon was in those days at least as important a centre of the clothing

industry. The broadcloth of the Gloucestershire valleys, Devonshire and Hampshire kersies,

Whitney blankets and Chipping Norton tweeds, meant sweet grass and long wool, with a little

water-power to turn the fulling-mills, and not coal, to which material to be worked up was to be

brought from the four quarters of the globe. The apparent condition of labour in those days

seems almost idyllic, compared with what it now is: but it must be remembered that then as now

the worker was in the hands of the monopolist of land and raw material; nor was it likely that the

latter should have held his special privilege for two hundred years without applying some system

by which it could be made the most of. Between the period of the decay of the craft-gilds and

this latter half of the eighteenth century there had grown up a system of labour which could not

have been applied to the mediæval workmen; for they worked for themselves and not for a

master or exploiter, and thus were masters of their material and their tools and their time. This

system is that of the Division of Labour; under it the unit of labour is not an individual man, but

a group, every member of which is helpless by himself, but trained by constant practice to the

repetition of a small part of the work, acquires great precision and speed in its performance. In

short, each man is not so much a machine as a part of a machine. As, for example, it takes five

men to make a glass-bottle: it is the group of these five men that makes the bottle, not any one of

them. It is clear that under this system the individual workman is entirely at the mercy of his

master the capitalist in his capacity of superintender of labour: in order not to be crushed by him,

he must combine to oppose his own interests to those of his employer. It was by this system,

then, that the demands of the growing world-market were supplied down to the end of the

eighteenth century. The great political economist, Adam Smith, whose book was first published

in 1771, marks the beginning of the transition between this system and that of the great machine

industries; but his work implies throughout the Division of Labour system.

But that system was now to melt into the new one: the workman, from being a machine, was to

become the auxiliary of a machine. The invention of the spinning- jenny by Hargreaves in 1760

is the first symptom of the beginning of this Industrial Revolution. From thence to the invention

of steam as a motive-force, and thence again to our own days, the stream of invention has been

continuous. The discovery that iron could be made with pit-coal removed the seat of the iron

manufacture from the wooded countries of the south and west, where the old iron-works, called

'bloomeries', used to be carried on, to the northern and midland coal districts, and all

manufacture of any importance flowed to the seat of fuel; so that South Lancashire, for instance,

was changed from a country of moorland and pasture, with a few market towns and the ancient

manufacturing city of Manchester, into a district where the 'villages', still so called, but with

populations of fifteen or twenty thousand souls, are pretty much contiguous, and the country has

all but disappeared. Of course a great part of this is the work of the years that have followed on

the invention of railways; but even in the earlier period of this industrial revolution the change

was tremendous and sudden and the sufferings of the working classes very great, as no attempt

was made to alleviate the distress that was sure to be caused by the change from the use of

human hands to machinery. Nor indeed could it have been made in a country governed by

bourgeois constitutionalism until measures were actually forced on the government. In 1811 the

prevailing distress was betokened by the first outbreak of the Luddites. These were organized

bands of men who went about breaking up the machinery which was the immediate cause of

their want of employment and consequent starvation. The locality where these riots were most

frequent was the northern midland counties, where the newly-invented stocking-frames were

specially obnoxious to them. The Luddites became the type of bodies of rioters who by a half-

blind instinct throughout this period threw themselves against the advancing battalions of

industrial revolution. In 1816, the year which followed the peace with France, the cessation of all

the war industries threw more people still out of employment, and in addition the harvest was a

specially bad one. As a consequence, this hunger insurrection was especially violent in that year.

The riots were put down with corresponding violence, and the rioters punished with the utmost

harshness. But as times mended somewhat this insurrection, which was, as we have said, a mere

matter of hunger, and was founded on no principle, died out, although for a time riots having for

their object destruction of property, especially of the plant and stock of manufacturers, went on

through the whole of the first half of the century. The 'Plug Riots'(1)

, in the middle of the Chartist

agitation, may be taken for an example of these.

It was a necessary consequence of the introduction of elaborate machinery that women and

children should be largely employed in factories to diminish the number of adult males. This

resource for the development of the profits of the new system was used by the manufacturers

with the utmost recklessness, till at last it became clear to the bourgeois government that the

scandal created by its abuse would put an end to its use altogether, unless something were done

to palliate its immediate evils; and accordingly a series of Factory Acts were passed, in the teeth

of the most strenuous and unscrupulous resistance on the part of the capitalists, who grudged the

immediate loss which resulted in the hampering of the 'roaring trade' they were driving, even

though it were for the ultimate benefit of their class. The first of these Acts which was really

intended to work was passed in 1830, and they were consolidated finally in 1867. It should be

understood that these Acts were not intended to benefit the great mass of adult workers, but were

rather concessions to the outcry of the philanthropists at the condition of the women and

especially the children so employed.

Meanwhile, in spite of all the suffering caused by the Industrial Revolution, it was impossible for

the capitalists to engross the whole of the profits gained by it, or at least to go on piling them up

in an ever-increasing ratio. The class struggle took another form, besides that of mere hunger

riots and forcible repression, that of the Trade Unions. Although the primary intention of these

was the foundation of benefit societies, as with the first guilds of the early Middle Ages, like

them also they had soon to take in hand matters dealing with the regulation of labour. The first

struggles of the trades' unions with capital took place while they were still illegal; but the repeal

of the law against the combination of workmen in 1824 set them free in that respect, and they

soon began to be a power in the country. Aided by the rising tide of commercial prosperity,

which made the capitalists more willing to yield up some part of their enormous profits rather

than carry on the struggle à l'outrance, they prevailed in many trade contests, and succeeding

(sic) in raising the standard of livelihood for skilled workmen, though of course by no means in

proportion to the huge increase in the sum of the national income. Further than this it was and is

impossible for them to go so long as they recognise the capitalists as a necessary part of the

organization of labour. It was not at first understood by the capitalist class that they did so

recognize them, and consequently in the period of their early successes the trades' unions were

considered mere revolutionists, and were treated to that kind of virulent and cowardly abuse and

insult, which the shopkeeper in terror for his shop always has at his tongue[']s end.

The abolition of the corn-laws in 1847 and the consequent cheapening of necessary food for the

workers, the discovery of gold in California and Australia, the prodigious increase in the luxury

and expenditure of the upper and middle-classes, all the action and reaction of the commercial

impulse created by the great machine industries, gave an appearance of general prosperity to the

country, in which, as we have said, the skilled workmen did partake to a certain extent; and the

views of middle-class optimists as to the continuance of bourgeois progress, and the gradual

absorption of all the worthy part of the working-classes into its ranks seemed confirmed till

within the last few years; all the more as the practical triumph of the Liberal party had ceased to

make 'politics' a burning question. Nevertheless, as a sign that the underground lava had not

ceased flowing, it was noticed that ever since the ripening of the great industries, in periods of

about ten years came recurring depressions of trade; these were accounted for in various

ingenious ways, but otherwise did not trouble the capitalist mind, which got to consider this also,

because of its regular recurrence, as a sign of the stability of the present system, and merely

looked upon it as a thing to be taken into the general average and insured against in the usual

manner. But within the last few years this latest eternal bourgeois providence has failed us. The

nations whom we assumed would never do anything but provide us with raw materials, have

become our rivals in manufacture and our competitors in the world-market, while owing to the

fact that America has enormous stretches of easily tilled virgin soil, which does not need manure,

and that the climate of India makes it easy to support life there, those two countries supply us

with such large amounts of grain, and at so cheap a rate, that raising it in England has become

unprofitable; so that the farmers are poor, and the landlords cannot get the same rents for

agricultural land as formerly. The exports have fallen off; towns where six years ago trade was

flourishing and wages high, are now encumbered with a population which they cannot find

employment for; and though from time to time there are rumours of improvement in trade,

nothing comes of them, and people are obliged to await some stroke of magic which shall bring

us back our old prosperity 'of leaps and bounds'.

The fact is that the commerce of the great industries has entered insensibly into its second stage,

and mere cut-throat competition between the different nations has taken the place of the

benevolent commercial despotism of the only nation which was thoroughly prepared to take

advantage of the Industrial Revolution -- Great Britain, to wit.

This second stage is doubtless preparing the final one which will end with the death of the whole

bourgeois commercial system. Meanwhile, what is the real social product of the Industrial

Revolution? We answer the final triumph of the middle-classes, materially, intellectually, and

morally. As the result of the great political revolution in France was the abolition of aristocratic

privilege, and the domination in the world of politics of the bourgeoisie, which hitherto had had

little to do with it, so the English Industrial Revolution may be said to have created a new

commercial middle-class hitherto unknown to the world. This class on the one hand consolidated

all the groups of the middle-class of the preceding epoch, such as country squires large and

small, big farmers, merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, and professional men; and made

them so conscious of their solidarity, that the ordinary refined and thinking man of to-day cannot

really see any other class at all, but only outside his own class certain heterogeneous groups to be

used as instruments for the further advancement of that class. On the other hand, it has attained

such complete domination that the upper-classes are merely adjuncts to it and servants of it. In

fact, these also are now of the bourgeois class, as they are all engaged in commerce in one way

or other: eg., the higher nobility are all either house-agents or coal-factors, and would be of no

importance without their 'businesses'. Moreover, striving ever to extend itself downwards as well

as upwards, the middle-class has absorbed so much in that direction, especially within the last

thirty years, that it has now nothing left below it except the mere propertyless proletariat. These

last are wholly dependent upon it, utterly powerless before it until the break up of the system

which has created it, the signs of whose beginning we have just noted, shall force them into a

revolt against it. In the course of that revolt this great middle-class will in its turn be absorbed

into the proletariat, which will form a new Society in which classes will have ceased to exist.

This is the next Revolution, as inevitable, as inexorable, as the rising of to-morrow's sun.

1 This meant destruction of boilers in factories, the rioters pulling out the plugs to ensure their

bursting.

Chapter 10 - Political Movements in England

During the French Revolution, especially during its earlier stages there was a corresponding

movement in England. It made some noise at the time, but was merely an intellectual matter, led

by a few aristocrats -- eg., the Earl of Stanhope -- and had no sympathy with the life of the

people; it was rather a piece of aristocratic Bohemianism, a tendency to which has been seen in

various times, even our own. For the rest, there certainly was in England a feeling, outside this

unreal republicanism -- a feeling of which Priestly the Unitarian may be looked on as a

representative; this feeling was of the nature of that felt by respectable and thoughtful Radicals

of later days, and was distinctly bourgeois, as the other was aristocratic.

The French Revolution naturally brought about a great reaction, not only in absolutist countries,

but also in England, the country of Constitutionalism; and this reaction was much furthered and

confirmed by the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons in France. We may take as

representative names of this reaction the Austrian Prince Mettternich (sic) on the Continent and

Lord Castlereagh in England. The stupid and ferocious repression of the governments acting

under this influence, as well as the limitless corruption by which they were supported, were met

in England by a corresponding progressive agitation, which was the beginning of Radicalism.

Burdett and Cartwright are representatives of the earlier days of this agitation, and later on Hunt,

Carlile, Lovett, and others. William Cobbett must also be mentioned as belonging to this period -

- a man of great literary capacity of a kind, and with flashes of insight as to social matters far

before his time, but clouded by violent irrational prejudices and prodigious egotism; withal a

peasant rather than a bourgeois -- a powerful disruptive agent, but incapable of association with

others. This period of Radical agitation was marked by a piece of violent repression in the shape

of the so-called Peterloo Massacre, where an unarmed crowd at a strictly political meeting was

charged and cut down by the yeomanry, and eleven people killed outright(1)

.

This agitation, which was partly middle-class and partly popular, was succeeded by the Chartist

movement, which was almost exclusively supported by the people, though some of the leaders --

as Feargus O'Connor and Ernest Jones -- belonged to the middle-class. Chartism, on the face of

it, was as much a political movement as the earlier Radical one; its programme was wholly

directed towards parliamentary reform; but as we have said, it was a popular movement, and its

first motive power was the special temporary suffering of the people, due, as we said in our last

chapter, to the disturbance of labour caused by the growth of the machine industry; and the

electoral and parliamentary reforms of its programme were put forward because it was supposed

that if they were carried they would affect the material condition of the people directly: at the

same time, however, there is no doubt that the pressure of hunger and misery gave rise to other

hopes besides the above-mentioned delusion as to reform, and ideas of Socialism were current

among the Chartists though they were not openly put forward on their programme. Accordingly

the class-instinct of the bourgeoisie saw the social danger that lurked under the apparently

political claims of the charter, and so far from its receiving any of the middle-class sympathy

which had been accorded to the Radical agitation, Chartism was looked upon as the enemy, and

the bourgeois progressive movement was sedulously held aloof from it. It is worthy of note that

Chartism was mainly a growth of the midland and northern counties -- that is, of the great

manufacturing districts -- and that it never really flourished in London. In Birmingham the

movement had the greatest force, and serious riots took place there while a Chartist conference

was sitting in the town. The movement gave birth to a good deal of popular literature; and it must

be remembered that the press was very strictly controlled by the Government. No paper was

allowed to be issued without a stamp, the expense of which prevented the issue of cheap papers;

and one of the incidents of the struggle was the determined opposition to this law kept up by

some courageous agitators, who published unstamped papers in the teeth of the certain

imprisonment that awaited them.

The Chartist movement went on vigorously enough till the insufficiency both of its aims and of

knowledge as to how to carry them out found out the weak places in it. The immediate external

cause of its wreck was the unfortunate schism that arose between the supporters of moral force

and physical force in the body itself. The fantastic folly of supposing that there can be any 'moral

force' in matters political which does not rest on the resolution of a party to attain their end by

the use of what 'physical force' they may haye, if it should become necessary to use it, does not

call for much comment here; although some thoughtless persons may even at present think that

they believe such a 'moral force' exists. On the other hand, it is clear to us now that a Chartist

revolt had no chance of success at that time, and but for self-deception would have been clear to

both leaders and rank and file of the party then. It may here be mentioned that the trump-card

which the Chartists were always thinking of playing was the organization of an universal strike,

under the picturesque title of the Holy Month. In considering the enormous difficulties, or rather

impossibilities, of this enterprise, we should remember that its supporters understood that the

beginnings of it would be at once repressed forcibly, and that it would lead directly to civil war.

The truth is that there were two distinct groups in the party, one of which went about as far as

our ultra-Radicals of the present day; and another which was at heart Socialist, only deficient in

knowledge, and consequently without definite principles on which to base action; and these two

groups pretty much corresponded to the division between the supporters of moral and physical

force.

From 1842, when the schism came to a head, Chartism began to die out. Its decay, however, was

far more due to the change that was coming over the economical state of affairs than even to its

incomplete development of principle and ill-considered tactics. Things were settling down from

the dislocation caused by the rise of the great industries. The workers shared in the added wealth

brought about by enormous expansion of trade, although in an absurdly small proportion to the

share of the middle-classes; but those classes tended ever to become more numerous and more

contented. The trades' unions began to be powerful, and improved the prospects of the skilled

workmen. So-called co-operation began to flourish: it was really an improved form of joint-

stockery, which could be engaged in by the workmen, but was and is fondly thought by some to

be if not a shoeing-horn to Socialism at least a substitute for it; indeed Chartism itself at this time

became involved in a kind of half co-operative half peasant-proprietorship land scheme, which of

course proved utterly abortive.

As this improvement in the condition of the working-classes weakened that part of the life of

Chartism which depended on mere hunger desperation, so the growing political power in the

middle-classes and the weakening of the mere Tory reaction swallowed up the political part of its

life.

Chartism, therefore, flickered out in the years that followed 1842, but its last act was the

celebrated abortive threat at revolt which took place in April 1848. And it must be said that there

was something appropriate in such a last act. For this demonstration was distinctly caused by

sympathy with the attacks on absolutism then taking place on the Continent, and Chartism was

always on one side of it a part of the movement which was going on all over Europe, and was

directed against the reaction which followed on the French Revolution, and which was

represented by the 'Holy Alliance' of the absolutist sovereigns against both bourgeoisie and the

people.

On the fall of Chartism, the Liberal Party, a nondescript and flaccid creation of bourgeois

supremacy, a party without principles or definition, but a thoroughly adequate expression of

English middle-class hypocrisy, cowardice, and short-sightedness, engrossed the whole of the

political progressive movement in England, and dragged the working-classes along with it, blind

as they were to their own interests and the solidarity of labour. This party has shown little or no

sympathy for the progressive movement on the Continent, unless when they deemed it connected

with their anti-Catholic prejudice. It saw no danger in the Cæsarism which took the place of the

corrupt sham Constitutionalism of Louis Philippe as the head of the police and stock-jobbing

régime, which dominated France in the interests of the bourgeoisie, and hailed Louis Napoleon

with delight as the champion of law and order.

Any one, even a thoughtful person, might have been excused for thinking in the years that

followed on 1848 that the party of the people was at last extinguished in England, and that the

class-struggle had died out and given place to the peaceable rule of the middle-classes, scarcely

disturbed by occasional bickerings carried on in a lawful manner between the two parties to that

false free-contract, which is the lying foundation on which Commercial Society rests. But, as we

shall show in a future chapter, under all this, Socialism was making great strides and developing

a new and scientific phase, which at last resulted in the establishment of the International

Association, whose aim was to unite the workers of the world in an organization which should

consciously oppose itself to the domination of middle-class capitalism. The International was

inaugurated in England in 1864, at a meeting held at St Martin's Hall, London, and at which

Professor Beesly took the chair. It made considerable progress among the Trades' Unions, and

made a great impression (beyond indeed what its genuine strength warranted) on the arbitrary

Governments of Europe. It culminated in the Socialistic influence it had, in the Commune of

Paris, of which we shall treat in a separate chapter. The International did not long out-live the

Commune, and once more for several years all proletarian influence was dormant in England,

except for what activity was possible among the foreign refugees living there, with whom some

few of the English working-men had relations. From this connection sprang, however, a new

movement, which we must barely mention, though it cannot yet be considered a matter of

history. In 1881, an attempt was made to federate the various Radical Clubs into a body, with a

programme which, though for the most part merely Radical, had an infusion of Socialism in it,

and which took the name of the Democratic Federation. The Radical Clubs, however, that had

joined soon seceded, mostly from disagreement with the revolu- tionary attitude taken by the

Federation on the Irish question. In 1883, the programme became more definitely Socialistic, and

the next year the title was changed to that of the Social Democratic Federation; but in the last

days of 1884 differences of opinion which had been developing for some time, chiefly centering

on the questions of Parliamentary Opportunism and Nationalism, ended in a secession which

founded the Socialist League as a definite Revolutionary Socialist body early in 1885.

At the present time the Socialist bodies, though relatively small, tend to attract various elements

to them; the discontent of the workmen with an outlook of ever increasing gloom; that also of the

Ultra-Radicals unable to make any real impression on the dense mass of mingled Conservatism

and Whiggery, which really governs the country. The aspirations of thoughtful people who have

studied the works of the great Socialist thinkers; the permeation of Socialist feeling from its

centres on the Continent; and lastly and chiefly the steady march of events towards a new state of

Society, which is making itself felt even amongst those who are unconscious of the advance of

Socialism, or hostile to it -- all these causes combining together, are forcing even England, the

stronghold of middle-class domination, to pay attention to the subject, and will certainly before

long form a new and powerful Party of the People, whose outlook will be far more hopeful than

that of any of those we have told of; since its aim will no longer be partial or one-sided, but will

be the realization of a new Society with new politics, ethics, and economics, in short, the

transformation of civilization into Socialism.

1 The readers of Commonweal will find an article on this subject in the first number (Feb. 1885),

by our comrade E. T. Craig, who was in Manchester at the time, though not an eye-witness. It is

interesting to note that the scene of the massacre, St Peter's Fields, is now a mass of streets in the

very centre of the city of Manchester.

Chapter 11 - Reaction and Revolution on the Continent

When the great war which Napoleon waged against Europe came to an end by his defeat and

ruin, France was once more handed over to the Bourbons, and Europe fell into the arms of

reaction and sheer absolutism. The Holy Alliance, or union of reactionary monarchs, undertook

the enterprise of crushing out all popular feeling, or even anything that could be supposed to

represent it in the persons of the bourgeois.

But the French Revolution had shaken absolutism too sorely for this enterprise to have more than

a very partial success even on the surface. The power of absolutism was undermined by various

revolutionary societies, mostly (so-called) secret, which attracted to them a great body of

sympathy, and in consequence seemed far more numerous and immediately dangerous than they

really were. Still there was a great mass of discontent, mostly political in character, and by no

means confined to the poorer classes.

This discontent went on gathering head, till in 1830, and again in 1848, it exploded into open

revolt against absolutism all over Europe. This revolt, we must repeat, was in the main a mere

counter-stroke to the reaction which was diligently striving to restore the aristocratic privilege

which the French Revolution had abolished, and to sustain what of it had escaped its attack. In

1830 the revolt was purely bourgeois in character, and was in no sense social, but, as above said,

political. In 1848 it had in some places a strong infusion of the proletarian element, which

however was dominated by middle-class patriotism and ideas which led to the assertion and

consolidation of nationalities. But a new element was present in these latter revolutionary

movements, though at first it did not seem to influence their action much. This was the first

appearance in politics of modern or scientific Socialism, in the shape of the Communist

Manifesto of Marx and Engels, first published in 1847. The rise and development of this phase

will be dealt with in detail further on; at present we can do no more than call attention to the

steady and continuous influence of this last-born Socialism, compared with the rapid extinction

of Babeuf's propaganda, although he had a numerous body of adherents; since this fact marks a

very great advance in opinion since the end of the eighteenth century.

The general effect, however, at least as seen openly, of these insurrections was little more than

the shaking of absolutism and the supplanting it in various degrees by middle-class

constitutionalism; and also, as aforesaid, an added impulse to the consolidation of nationalities,

which later on produced the unification of Italy and of Germany, and the assertion of the

independence of the Hungarian nationality.

In France the outward effects of the insurrection were most obvious and lasted the longest; but

the bourgeois republic which took the place of Louis Philippe's corrupt constitutional monarchy

asserted itself tyrannically enough against the proletariat, and in consequence had no strength left

to meet the political adventurer Louis Napoleon, whose plot against the republic received just as

much resistance as gave him an excuse for the massacre of 4th of December 1851, by means of

which he terrorized France for many years; although as to numbers it was quite insignificant

compared with those which followed the taking of Paris by the bourgeois troops at the time of

the fall of the Commune in 1871.

This successful stroke had really no relation to any foregoing reactionary dictatorship. It even

professed to be founded on democratic feeling, though as a matter of fact it was the expression of

the non-political side of bourgeois life -- the social and commercial side -- the ideal of the

shopkeeper grown weary of revolutions and anxious to be let alone to make money and enjoy

himself vulgarly. Accordingly France settled down into a period of 'law and order', characterized

by the most shameless corruption and repulsive vulgarity. She got at last into full swing of the

rule of successful stock-jobbery which had already been established in England, and carried it on

with less hypocrisy than ourselves, but perhaps with more open blackguardism.

To sustain this régime various showy military enterprises were undertaken, some of which it was

attempted to invest with a kind of democratic sentiment. It was also of some importance to make

at least a show of giving employment to the working classes of France. This principally took the

form of the rebuilding of Paris and the restoration, or vulgarization, of the mediæval cathedrals

and public buildings, in which France is richer than any other country; so that this apotheosis of

middle-class vulgarity has left abiding tokens of its presence in a loss which can never be

repaired. But in spite of this militarism and the attempt to gain the support of the proletarians by

gifts of 'bread and pageants', discontent of various kinds sprang up and steadily increased.

Moreover, the new birth of Socialism was beginning to bear fruits; the Communistic propaganda

got firm hold of the city proletariat of France. Socialism was steadily preached in Paris at La

Villete and Belleville, which latter, originally laid out and built upon as an elegant suburb for

rich bourgeois, proved a failure, and became a purely workman's quarter in consequence.

While all this was going on underground as it were, the Cæsarism of the stock-exchange was

also beginning to get the worst of it in the game of statecraft; and at last the results of the

consolidation of nationalities which was the chief aim of the bourgeois revolt became obvious in

the revival of the old animosities between Germany and France. Bismarck, who had become the

attorney-dictator of Germany, had got to know the weakness of the showy empire of Louis

Napoleon, and had a well warranted confidence in that carefully elaborated machine the German

army. He laid a trap for the French Cæsar, who fell into it, perhaps not blindly, but rather driven

by a kind of gambler's last hope, akin to despair.

A great race war followed, the natural and inevitable outcome of which was the hopeless defeat

of the French army, led as it was by mere selfseekers and corrupt scoundrels, most of whom

lacked even that lowest form of honour which makes a Dugald Dalgetty faithful to the colours

under which he marches. The Second Empire was swept away. The new Republic proclaimed

after the collapse at Sedan still kept up a hopeless resistance to the unbroken strength of

Germany -- hopeless, since the corruption of the Empire still lived on in the bourgeois republic,

as typified in the person of the political gamester Gambetta. Paris was besieged, and taken after a

long resistance, which reflected infinite credit on the general population, who bore the misery of

the siege with prodigious patience and courage; but no less disgrace on those who pretended to

organize its defence, but who were really far more inclined to hand over the city to the Germans

than allow it to gain a victory under the auspices of the revolution.

All this must be looked upon by us as Socialists as merely the prelude to the great drama of the

Commune, whose aims and influence will form the subject of another chapter.

Chapter 12 - The Paris Commune of 1871, and the

Continental Movement Following It

In dealing with the great event of the Paris Commune, we must take for granted a knowledge of

the facts, which are in a brief form accessible to all since the publication by the Socialist League

of its pamphlet on the subject.

As we have stated before, the International was founded in 1864, under the leadership of

Beesley, Marx, and Odger. In 1869, at the Congress of Basle, Marx drew it into the compass of

Socialism; and though in England it still remained an indefinite labour-body, on the Continent it

became at once decidedly Socialistic and revolutionary, and its influence was very considerable.

The progress of Socialism and the spreading feeling of the solidarity of labour was very clearly

shown by the noble protest made by the German Socialists(1)

against the war with France, in the

teeth of a 'patriotic' feeling so strong in appearance that it might have been expected to silence

any objectors from the first. The result of the war seemed to offer at least a chance for action to

the rapidly increasing Socialist party, if they could manage to take advantage of it, to get into

their hands the political power; and under the influence of the Internationalists, the French

Socialists determined to take action if an immediate opportunity offered. Neither did the

opportunity fail. The final defeat of the French army at Sedan brought on the fall of the Empire,

when Republican France might perhaps have made terms with the invaders, whom the men of

the Empire had challenged. But a resistance was organized by Gambetta, at the head of a stock-

jobbing clique, whose interests, both commercial and political, forbade them to let the war die

out, lest they should find themselves face to face with a people determined to be fleeced no

longer. This resistance, sustained by the success with which this clique played on the sham

patriotic or jingo feelings of the general population, was always quite hopeless from a military

point of view, and brought the country to the verge of ruin. It also necessarily involved the

German siege of Paris, the result of which was to throw a great deal of power into the hands of

the city proletariat, since they at least were in earnest in their resistance to the foreign enemy,

and the theatrical resistance necessary to the ambition of the political adventurers who posed as

their leaders could not have a decent face to put upon it without their enthusiasm. In October,

while the siege was still at its height, a rising headed by Blanqui nearly succeeded in

overthrowing the bourgeois domination; and after the siege the possession of arms, especially

cannon, by the proletariat, in the face of the disarmed and disorganized army under the

bourgeois, afforded the opportunity desired by the Socialists. On the failure of Thiers' attempt to

disarm Paris -- whether he expected it to succeed, or only designed it as a trap to enable him to

fall with mere force of arms on Paris -- on this failure the insurrection took place, and the Central

Committee, largely composed of members of the International, got into their hands the executive

power, a great deal of which they retained during the whole of the existence of the Commune.

Their position was strengthened by the fact that, apart from their aims towards the economical

freedom of the proletariat, in their aspirations towards genuine federalization they were, in

appearance as (sic) least, in accord with the Radicals who wished to see an advanced

municipalism brought about.

As the movement progressed, it became more and more obvious that if the resistance to Thiers

and the attempt to establish municipal independence for Paris was to succeed, it must be through

the exercise of Socialist influence on the proletariat: the Radicals, therefore, were forced by the

march of events into alliance with the Socialists. The Socialist element therefore came to the

front, and enactments of a distinctly Socialistic nature were passed, involving the suspension of

contract and abolition of rents; and both in these matters and in the decentralization which was

almost the watchword of the Commune, the advance from the proceedings of the earlier

revolutionists is clearly marked. Also, although the Opportunity for the establishment of the

Commune was given by the struggle against foreigners, the international character of their

aspirations was shown by the presence of foreigners in the Council of the Commune and in

command of its troops. And though in itself the destruction of the Vendome Column may seem

but a small matter, yet considering the importance attached generally, and in France particularly,

to such symbols, the dismounting of that base piece of Napoleonic upholstery was another mark

of the determination to hold no parley with the old jingo legends.

It should be noted that the risings which took place in other towns in France were not so much

vanquished by the strength of the bourgeoisie, which at first found itself powerless before the

people, but rather fell through owing to a want of fuller development of Socialism and a more

vigorous proclamation of its principles.

The whole revolt was at last drowned in the blood of the workers of Paris. Certainly the

immediate result was to crush Socialism for the time by the destruction of a whole generation of

its most determined recruits. Nevertheless the very violence and excess of the bourgeois revenge

have, as we can now see, tended to strengthen the progress of Socialism, as they have set the seal

of tragedy and heroism on the mixed events of the Commune, and made its memory a rallying

point for all future revolutionists.

However, the fall of the Commune involved that of the International. The immediate failure of

its action was obvious, and blinded people to its indestructible principles. Besides, a period of

great commercial prosperity visited the countries of Europe at this time. The French milliards

which Germany had won as the prize of war were being turned over and over by the German

bourgeois in their merry game of 'beggar-my-neighbour'. England was at the height of its period

of 'leaps and bounds' -- a period now called by the German middle-classes themselves the

'swindle period'. Even France, in spite of her being the plundered country, recovered from the

condition into which the war had thrown her with a speed which made the plunderer envy her. In

short, it was one of those periods which prove to the bourgeois exploiter that he is positively

right, in which the bettermost workman grows quite unconscious of the chain which binds him,

and is contemptuously regardless of that which lies heavy on the labourer below him, to whom

the prosperity or adversity of the rest of the world make little or no difference.

Internal dissensions, also, were at work within the International, and at the Congress of the

Hague in 1872 it was broken up; and though it still existed as a name for the next year or two, the

remaining fragments of it did nothing worth speaking of.

In Vienna, in 1871, the movement in sympathy with the Commune became threatening, but was

repressed by the authorities, and several of the prominent members of the party were imprisoned

for the part they had taken in a Socialist demonstration -- amongst others, Johann Most and

Andreas Scheu.

For a while after the fall of the Commune the interest in the active side of the movement turns to

Russia and Germany. In 1878 Nobiling and Hodel shot at the Emperor William; which event

gave the occasion for the attack by Bismark (sic) on the rapidly increasing Socialist party in

October 1878, when the repressive laws were enacted which have been in force ever since. The

result of these laws, which suppressed meetings, papers, and other literature, has been to drive

the movement into a purely parliamentary course. In spite of the repression, the party has not

only succeeded in holding itself together, but has grown to large dimensions, numbering,

according to official statements, 650,000.

In Russia the Socialist movement was, on the face of it, mixed up with nationalist and political

agitation, which was natural in a country in the bonds of the crudest form of absolutism.

Nevertheless the ultimate aim of the party is unmistakable, and the propaganda has been carried

on with a revolutionary fervour and purity of devotion which have never been surpassed, if they

have ever been equalled. The slaying of the Czar on March 13, 1881, with the tragic scenes that

followed it, has been the most dramatic event which the Russian movement has given to the

world; and it must be said of it that it has marked and initiated a new revolutionary period. Since

that time the elements of Revolution have gathered force and cohesion; a sense of insecurity has

come over the authority of 'law and order'; the sympathies of all people of honesty and good

feeling have been attracted to the side of those suffering under mere open monstrous oppression;

and men's minds generally have been opened to new ideas on the more insidious oppression

under which labour groans in constitutionally governed countries.

The last stage of the great revolution inaugurated in France at the end of the eighteenth century

seems destined to be reached at the end of the nineteenth -- if, indeed, that thing of rags and

patches called 'Constitutional Government' can keep itself alive so long.

1 They also protested, at the end of the war, against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine.

Chapter 13 - The Utopists: Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier

It is now necessary for us to turn for a while from the political progress of Socialism, to note the

school of thinkers who preceded the birth of modern scientific or revolutionary Socialism. These

men thought it possible to regenerate Society by laying before it its short-comings, follies, and

injustice, and by teaching through precept and example certain schemes of reconstruction built

up from the aspirations and insight of the teachers themselves. They had not learned to recognize

the sequence of events which forces social changes on mankind whether they are conscious of its

force or not, but believed that their schemes would win their way to general adoption by men's

perception of their inherent reasonableness. They hoped to convert people to Socialism, to

accepting it consciously and formally, by showing them the contrast between the confusion and

misery of existing civilization, and the order and happiness of the world which they foresaw.

From the elaborate and detailed schemes of future Society which they built up they have been

called the Utopists; the representatives of the different phases of their school are three most

remarkable men, born within a few years of each other, whose aspirations and insight have done

a very great deal to further the progress of Socialism, in spite of the incompleteness of their

views.

Robert Owen was born at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, in 1771, of a lower middle-class family;

he became a successful manufacturer through his own industry and quick-wittedness in the

beginning of the rise of the Great Machine Industries, when 'manufacturing' was advancing 'by

leaps and bounds'. He was a born philanthropist in the better sense of the word, and from the first

showed in all matters unbounded generosity and magnanimity. In the year 1800, when he was

not yet thirty, he became the manager of the New Lanark Mills, and set to work on his first great

experiment, which was briefly the conversion of a miserable, stupid, and vicious set of people

into a happy, industrious, and orderly community, acting on the theory that man is the creature of

his surroundings, and that by diligent attention to the development of his nature he can be

brought to perfection. In this experiment he was entirely successful, but it was not in him to stop

there, as the plain words he said of his success showed clearly enough: 'Yet these men were my

slaves.'(1)

He took part in all kinds of projects of a philanthropical nature, still founding all his

action on his theory of the perfectibility of man by the amelioration of his surroundings, and

became the first great champion of co-operation, although he did not suppose, as the co-operators

of the present day do, that anything short of universal co-operation would solve the social

question. In 1815, he pressed a meeting of Glasgow manufacturers to petition Parliament to

shorten the hours of labour in the cotton mills, and the change which he experienced from the

approbation of the governing classes to their reprobation, may well date from that proceeding of

his, as a bourgeois biographer of his hints. But he still kept his position of a popular

philanthropist, even after his declaration in favour of cc-operation, until he at last cut himself off

from respectability, by openly attacking Society through its received religions (August 21, 1816),

from which date onward he was scouted by all that 'Society', of which he was now the declared

enemy. But he was in nowise daunted. In 1823, he proposed Communistic villages as a remedy

fo the distress in Ireland; he established, in 1832, an exchange in Gray's Inn Road, in which

labour was equitably exchanged against labour; and in 1825 he bought New Harmony from a

community already established there (the Rappites), and made his great experiment in living in

common; and late in life he published his 'Book of the New Moral World', which contains the

exposition of his doctrine.

It will be thus seen that he was unwearied in practical experiments. His shortcoming was the

necessary one of the utopist, a total disregard of the political side of progress; he failed to see

that his experiments, useful as they were from that point of view, could never develope (sic) out

of the experimental state as long as the governors of Society forcibly uphold the so-called 'rights

of property', and he ignored the antagonism of classes necessarily existing under this system, and

which in the long run must bring about the Socialism which he, the most generous and best of

men, spent his whole life in attempting to realize. He died in 1858.

Saint Simon was born of a noble family at Paris in 1760. He acquired and ran through a fortune,

deliberately experimenting in the various forms of 'life' from extravagance to abject poverty.

There was in him none of that tendency to practical experiment in quasi-Socialistic schemes

which characterized Robert Owen. His philosophy was mingled with a mysticism which had a

tendency to increase, a tendency to form a new religion rather than to realize a new condition of

life, and which was carried into the absurdities of a kind of worship by his immediate followers,

more or less imitated by the Positivists of our own day, whose founder, Auguste Comte, was his

most cherished disciple. His Socialism was of a vague kind, and admitted the existence of classes

of talent as expressed by the motto of Saint Simonism, 'From each according to his capacity, to

each according to his deeds'. In spite, however, of the tendency to mysticism, he showed singular

flashes of insight in matters historical and economic, and intellectually was certainly ahead of

Robert Owen. He may be said to have set himself the task of learning all life by whatever means

and at whatever expense, in order to devote himself to the new religion, 'whose great aim is the

swiftest possible amelioration of the moral and physical condition of the poorest and most

numerous class'.

Frederick Engels well says of him: 'As early as his "Letters from Geneva", Saint Simon laid

down that all men ought to work, and that the Reign of Terror had been the reign of the non-

possessing masses. To face the fact in 1802 that the French Revolution was a struggle between

the noblesse, the bourgeoisie, and the non-possessing classes was a discovery of genius. In 1816

he asserted that politics were but the science of production, and predicted their absorption by

economy. The knowledge that economic conditions serve as the base of political institutions only

shows itself here in the germ; nevertheless, this proposition contains clearly the conversion of the

political government of men into an administration of things and a direction of the process of

production; that is to say, the abolition of the State, of which such a noise has since been made'.

Internationalism also was clearly enunciated by Saint Simon. We quote Engels again: 'With an

equal superiority over the views of his contemporaries, he declared in 1814, immediately after

the entry of the allies into Paris, and again in 1815 during the war of the hundred days, that the

sole guarantee of the peace and prosperous development of Europe, was an alliance between

France and England, and of those two countries with Germany. Certainly it needed a courage by

no means common to preach to the French of 1815 alliance with the victors at Waterloo.'

It is worth noting that one of the schemes of the Saint Simonians, which was most ridiculed at

the time, was the cutting of the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama, and that M. de Lesseps was a

Saint Simonian.

Saint Simon died in great poverty in 1825, with words of hope for the future of the party on his

lips.

Charles Fourier was born in 1772 at Lyons; his father was a draper. He lost his property in the

Revolution, and afterwards went into business as a broker. Amidst his dealings with Society, he

was early struck by the shortcomings and injustices of individualism and competition. In his first

book, 'The Theory of the Four Movements', he elaborates the proposition that human nature is

perfectible through the free play of the appetites and passions, and asserts that misery and vice

spring from the restraints imposed by Society. His criticism of modern Society is most valuable

as anticipating that of scientific Socialism; unlike his contemporaries he has an insight into the

historical growth of Society: 'He divides it into four periods of development, Savagery,

Barbarism, Patriarchalism, and Civilization, meaning by the latter the Bourgeois Civilization(2)

.'

His saying, 'In civilization poverty is born even of superabundance', may well be noted in these

days, and compared with Robert Owen's in 1816, 'Our best customer, the war, is dead'.

As a basis of the reconstruction of Society, Fourier advocated Industrial Co-operation; but here

his Utopianism led him to the trap of formulating dogmatically an electorate scheme of life in all

its details, a scheme which could never be carried out, however good the principlse (sic) on

which it was based might be. His scheme arranges for phalanxsteries as the unit of co-operation,

in which all life and all industry, agricultural and other, should be carried on, and all details are

carried out by him most minutely, the number of each phalanxtery being settled at 1600 souls.

His most valuable idea was the possibility and necessity of apportioning due labour to each

capacity, and thereby assuring that it should be always pleasurable, and his dictum that children,

who generally like making dirt- pies and getting into a mess, should do the dirty work of the

community, may at least be looked on as an illustration of this idea, though laid down as a formal

law. His system was not one of pure equality, but admitted distinctions between rich and

(comparatively) poor; and advocated a fantastic division of wealth between labour, capital, and

talent. The abolition of marriage was a tenet of his doctrine.

In 1812, Fourier's mother died and left him some property, and he retired into the country to

write his 'Treatise on the Association of Domesticity and Agriculture'. Afterwards he came to

Paris again, became a clerk in an American firm, and wrote in 1830 his 'New Industrial World'. It

is lamentable to have to relate that in 1831 he wrote attacking both Owen and St Simon as

charlatans, in spite of the curious points of resemblance he had to either of them. He died in

1837, but not till he had founded a school, of which Victor Considerans, author of the 'Destinée

Sociale', was the most distinguished member. The Fourierists started a paper in 1832, which

expired in two years, but was revived in 1836, and finally suppressed by Government in 1850. A

scheme for realizing the Phalanxtery experimentally was set on foot in 1832 by a deputy of

France, but it failed for lack of funds; so that of the three great Utopists, Owen was the only one

who had the fortune, good or bad as it may be considered, of seeing his schemes tried by

experience. Cabet, indeed, a revolutionist of '48, founded a community in America under the

name of Icaria, which was (and is, for it still exists) more nearly an approach to genuine

Communism than any of the other communities which have owed their origin to Utopian

Socialism. Of these communities there remains a word to be said as a warning to those who are

young in Socialism. Although as experiments in association something may be learned from

them, their conditions of life have no claim to the title of Communism, which most unluckily has

often been applied to them. Communism can never be realized till the present system of Society

has been destroyed by the workers taking hold of the political power. When that happens it will

mean that Communism is on the point of absorbing and transmuting Civilization.

1.Yet in 1806, when owing to the rise in cotton he could not continue manufacturing, he stopped

the mills and paid his people their full wages till he could go on again in fou months time, a

prodeeding which cost him £7000back

.

2.Frederick Engels in 'Socialisme Utopique', and 'Socialisme Scientifique', as also the quotations

above

Chapter 14 - The Transition from Utopists to Modern

Socialism

Of the Socialist thinkers who serve as a kind of link between the Utopists and the school of the

Socialism of historical evolution, or scientific Socialists, by far the most noteworthy figure is

Proudhon who was born at Besançon in 1809. By birth he belonged to the working-class, his

father being a brewer's cooper, and he himself as a youth followed the occupation of cowherding.

In 1838, however, he published an essay on general grammar, and in 1839 he gained a

scholarship to be held for three years, a gift of one Madame Suard to his native town. The result

of this advantage was his most important though far from his most voluminous work, published

the same year, as the essay which the Madame Suard's scholars were bound to write: it bore the

title of 'What is Property?' his answer being, Property is Robbery.

As may be imagined, this remarkable essay caused much stir and indignation, and Proudhon was

censured by the Besançon Academy for this production, and narrowly escaped a prosecution. In

1841 he was tried at Besançon for a letter he wrote to Victor Considerant, the Fourierist, but was

acquitted. In 1846 he wrote his 'Pholisophie de la Misère' (Philosophy of Poverty), which

received an elaborate reply and refutation from Karl Marx.

In 1847 he went to Paris. In the Revolution of 1848 he showed himself a vigorous

controversialist, and was elected Deputy for the Seine; he wrote numerous articles in several

journals, mostly criticisms of the progress of the revolution: in the Chamber he proposed a tax of

one-third to be levied on all interest and rent, which was, as a matter of course, rejected. He also

put forward a scheme for a mutual credit bank, by which he hoped to simplify exchange and

reduce interest to a vanishing point: but this scheme was also rejected.

After the failure of the revolution of '48, Proudhon was imprisoned for three years, during which

time he married a young woman of the working-class.

In 1858 he developed his system of 'Mutualism' fully in his last work, entitled 'Justice in the

Revolution and the Church'. In consequence of the publication of this book he had to retire to

Brussels, but was amnestied in 1860, came back to France, and died at Passy in 1865.

Proudhon's opinions and works may be broadly divided into two periods: In his 'What is

Property?' his position is that of a Communist pure and simple; but after this one clear

development of a definite thesis we meet in his works, and we must add, in his political actions

also, with so much paradox that it is next to impossible to formulate in brief any definite

Proudhonian doctrine. At one time a Communist, at another the vehement opponent of

Communism; at one time professing Anarchy, at another lending himself to schemes of the

crudest State Socialism; at one time an enthusiastic Theist, at another apparently as strong an

Atheist; in one passage of his works giving his eager adhesion to Auguste Comte's worship of

women, in another a decided contemner of the female sex, -- it is with a sense of confusion that

one rises from the perusal of his works.

His connection with the Revolution of '48 seems to have been the turning point in the history; in

his address to the electors of the Seine, in which he put forward the scheme for a credit bank

backed by a number of decrees of a State- Socialistic nature, and strongly smacking of Bismarck,

he announces himself as the man who said Property is Robbery, says that he still maintains that

opinion, and then goes on to defend the rights of property which he had so successfully

annihilated in his first work.

But as to his political career, the element he had to work in was an impossible one for the success

of a man holding definite Socialistic ideas. On the one hand were the Jacobins with their

archæological restorations of the ideas and politics of 1789; on the other Socialism showing itself

and taking hold of people's minds, but attempting to realize its doctrines by crude dislocated and

consequently hopeless schemes of action. Into all these affairs Proudhon looked shrewdly and

with insight, and his bitter criticisms of the confusion' of the period were shown by the event to

have been well founded.

Proudhon defended the modern family and monogamy in its strictest sense, and does not seem to

have troubled himself to study the history of those institutions even superficially: in short, he

seems to have been singularly lacking in the (sic) historical sense, and had not formed any

conception of the evolution of society. Those who read his works will find themselves forced to

return to his first essay, 'What is Property?' if they are seeking in him for any consistent series of

ideas. He was an eager and rough controversialist, and his style is brilliant and attractive in spite

of its discursiveness.

We may now mention the names of two men of no great importance in themselves, but worth

noting as forerunners of the sentimental Socialists and Christian Socialists of the present day.

Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais (born 1782, died 1854), is the type of the Christian

Socialist: he was intended for a priest from the first, and duly took orders. He began by efforts to

reform the Catholic Church, so as to make it an effective instrument for happiness and social

morality and reform. He expected to be helped and encouraged by the clergy in these efforts, and

at first, before they perceived their real tendency, he received some acknowledgement from

them. At last, in his paper L'Avenir (the future), he took so decidedly a democratic turn that he

incurred the animosity of the whole Church, especially of the then Pope, Gregory XVI. The

signal for his complete rupture with the Church, however was the publication (in 1834) of his

'Paroles d'un Croyant' (words of a believer), which the Pope characterized as 'small in size but

immense in perversity'. After that he became thoroughly democratic or even Communistic, as

Communism was then understood. A series of political works and pamphlets followed, all in the

sense of his new departure. He started, in 1848, two papers, one after another, which were

suppressed. He sat in the Republican Constituent Chamber till the coup d'etat; and while Deputy

drew up for the Left a plan of Constitution which was rejected as too revolutionary. He was

buried by his own direction without ecclesiastical rites.

Pierre le Roux (born 1798, died 1871) was originally a disciple of St Simon. In 1840 he

published his most important work, 'De L'Humanité', whence the name of his school, the

Humanitarians. He joined George Sand and Niardof in a literary review, and it was owing to this

connexion that the humanitarian tendencies of some of her novels are to be traced. In 1843 he set

on foot a co- operative printing association, and started a journal advocating co-operation, or as

he termed it, 'the pacific solution of the problem of the proletariat'. He also sat in the Republican

Chamber of 1848: was exiled in 1851 and lived in Jersey, not returning to France till 1869. He

died in Paris under the Commune, who deputed two of its members to attend his funeral, in the

words of the Official Journal, 'not in honour of the partizan of the mystical ideas of which we

now feel the evil, but of the politician who courageously undertook the defence of the

vanquished after the days of June'. This is an allusion to the unpractical and non-political

tendency of his teaching, which undertook to reform society by the inculcation of morality

blended with mysticism, the result of which was to be the gradual spread of voluntary co-

operation.

We finish this series with the well-known name of Louis Blanc, a personage more important than

the last-named, and more definitely Socialistic in principles than either he or Lamennais, though

his political career finished in a way unworthy of those principles, even if we accept the excuse

that he never grasped the great truth that only through the class struggle can the regeneration of

society be accomplished. He was born in 1813, of a middle-class family which, on the maternal

side, was Corsican, and an incident of the relations between him and his brother Charles is said

to have suggested to Dumas his famous novelette and play of the 'Corsican Brothers'.

In 1840 he 'published his 'Organization of Labour', the ideas of which he attempted to realize in

his famous 'National Workshops', by which he is best known. In this work he put forward the

genuine Socialistic maxim of 'From each according to his capacity, to each according to his

needs' as the basis of the production of a true society.

He took an active part in the Revolutionary Government of 1848, and got an edict passed

abolishing the punishment of death for political offences. And we ought here to notice that the

common impression that his National Workshops failed from inherent defects is wrong; they

were suppressed as dangerous by the Government, and their suppression was largely

instrumental in causing the June revolution. We must, however, also note that this scheme was

not founded on purely Socialistic principles, dangerous as it was thought to be at the time. In

consequence of the events of June Louis Blanc was compelled to flee from France to England,

where he wrote his 'History of the French Revolution'.

He returned to France 1869, was elected to the legislative body, but played only a subordinate

part in the stirring times that followed. It remains, indeed, an indelible stain on his character that

he deserted the cause of the people in the days of March, leaving Paris to sit amongst the

'Liberals' in the reactionary Chamber at Versailles.

He died in 1883, having outlived his reputation and influence.

Scientific Socialism - Karl Marx

The foregoing chapters on modern Socialists may be regarded as leading up to the full

development of the complete Socialist theory, or as it is sometimes called, 'scientific' Socialism.

The great exponent of this theory, and the author of the most thorough criticism of the

capitalistic system of production, is the late Dr Karl Marx.

He was born in 1818 at Treves, his father being a baptized Jew holding an official position in

that city. He studied for the law in the University of Bonn, passing his examination with high

honours in 1840. In 1843 he married Jenny von Westphalen, sister of the well-known Prussian

statesman of that name. Philosophy and political economy, with especial reference to the great

social problems of the age, were his special studies on leaving the university. These studies led

him towards Socialism, the result of which was that he felt compelled to decline the offer of an

important government post. About this time he left Treves for Paris, where he became co-editor

with Arnold Rug‚ of the Deutsch-Franzüsischen Jahrbücher; and he also edited the Socialist

journal Vorwärts; but in less than a twelvemonth he was compelled to leave France for Brussels.

In March 1848 he was driven from Belgium and fled to Cologne, where the revolutionary

ferment was at its height. He at once undertook the editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung, the

leading revolutionary journal, which was suppressed on the collapse of the revolutionary

movement in 1849.

We should mention that in 1847, in conjunction with his life-long friend, Frederic Engels, he put

forward the celebrated 'Communist Manifesto', which subsequently served as the basis of the

International Association.

After 1849 he went to Paris again, where he remained but a short time, and then left France for

London, remaining there with brief intermissions till his death, which took place in the spring of

1883.

The principal part he took in political action during his sojourn in England was the organization

of the International Association.

The most important among his works besides 'Das Kapital' are 'Die Heilige Familie', written in

conjunction with Frederic Engels; the 'Misere de Ia Philosophie', the answer to Proudhon

mentioned in our last article; '18 Brumaire', an anti-Napoleonic pamphlet; and 'Zur Kritik der

Politischer Economic', which laid the foundation for his great work 'Das Kapital'.

The importance of this latter work makes it necessary for us to indicate the contents of the

principal chapters, so as to form a brief sketch of the Socialist economy(1)

.

Part I deals with Commodities and Money. The first chapter defines a commodity. A commodity

according to Marx is briefly expressed as a socially useful product of labour which stands in

relation to other similar useful products of labour. The value of such a commodity is primarily

the amount of necessary social labour contained in it: that is to say, the average amount of labour

carried through a certain portion of time necessary to its production in a given state of society.

The young student must take special note that when Marx uses the word value by itself it is

always used in this sense; ie., to put it in a shorter form, as embodied average human labour. The

term Use-value explains itself. Exchange-value means the relation of one commodity to another

or to all others. The ultimate issue of the various expressions of Value is the money form: but in

the words of Marx, the step to the money-form 'consists in this alone, that the character of direct

and universal exchangeability -- in other words, that the universal equivalent form -- has now by

social custom become identified with the substance gold'.

The second chapter deals with Exchange. Exchange, says Marx, presupposes guardians or

owners of commodities, since these cannot go to market of themselves. A commodity possesses

for the owner no use-value where he seeks to exchange it: if it did, he would not seek to

exchange it. 'All commodities', says Marx, 'are non-use values for their owners and use values

for their non-owners. Consequently they must all change hands. But this change of hands is what

constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and

realizes them as values. Hence commodities must be realized as values before they can be

realized as use-values.'

Commodities, then, find their universal value represented by one commodity from among them,

which has in itself no use-value unless it be that of representing or of symbolizing the abstract

quality of value.

Chapter III deals with the circulation of commodities under the money form. Here Marx very

justly observes: 'It is because all commodities as values are realized human labour, and therefore

commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and

the latter be converted into the common measure of their value -- ie., into money. Money as a

measure of value is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of

value which is immanent in commodities, labour time.'

This long and important chapter proceeds to discuss the theory of circulating money or of

currency at considerable length and in great detail. The subject is one of such importance and

with respect to which so many fallacies are afloat, that we propose to devote our next article to

an exposition of its leading features.

1.We must remind the reader that we do not profess to offer more than some hints to the student

of Marx. Anything approaching to an abstract of 'Das Kapital' would take up space far beyond

the limits of the present little work

Chapter 16 - Scientific Socialism - Karl Marx II Money

We have now come to the point where it is necessary to consider the circulation of commodities;

the first means to this circulation is the establishment of a tertium quid, or universal equivalent.

And in order to have a really universal equivalent it is necessary that use-value should be

eliminated from it, since such an equivalent is required to express not the diverse qualities of all

the various commodities, but the relative quantity of embodied human labour which they

severally contain.

Money as a mere measure of value is imaginary and ideal, but the bodily form of it must express

quantitively equivalent abstract value -- ie., labour -- and takes the form of the precious metals,

finally of gold.

Gold has come to be the bodily form taken by the universal measure of value, partly because of

its natural qualities -- portability, durability, etc., but chiefly because the course of history has

invested it with this function; and also because its value, instead of changing from, say, week to

week, as is the case with other commodities, changes rather from century to century, so that its

value may be considered stable relatively to them, just as one speaks of indigo as a permanent

dye, which it is relatively to other dyes, although none are absolutely permanent(1)

.

Paper money is promises to pay gold, which is directly exchangeable with all other commodities.

Paper money, therefore, is merely a symbol of the exchange really effected by gold. This

universal equivalent takes the place of barter, which is the primitive and direct form of

exchange(2)

, and at which stage the distinction between buyer and seller has not arisen. It now

gives place to the first form of indirect exchange, in which a third term is interposed between the

articles which are to be parted with and acquired. Now for the first time the above distinction

takes shape. The seller has a commodity which he does not propose to consume, and therefore he

acquires with it money, with which money he buys in turn another commodity equal in quantity

to that with which he has parted, but different from it in quality. Marx has formulated this

transaction by the well-known and useful formula, Commodity, Money,Commodity: C - M - C.

The habit of hoarding which is common amongst ancient societies, and also among barbarous

peoples, is a natural concomitant of this stage of exchange, and is the first germ of Capital. It is

brought about by the arrest of the above process at its first phase thus, C - M -- the seller of the

commodity does not go on to buy. Under these conditions money becomes a social power; and

being a commodity like other commodities, can be acquired by private persons, whom it invests

with social power. Therefore in those states of society which had not outgrown their primitive

social ethics, money was considered the embodiment of all evil.

This stage of exchange marks the pre-commercial use of money; after a while it tends to

develope (sic) into another stage, which carries the exchange a step further. The holder of a

commodity which he does not propose to consume exchanges it for money, which he again

exchanges for a commodity to be used, not for his personal consumption but to be exchanged

once more for money. He would have no object in doing this if his aim were merely that of the

simple exchanger (C. M. C.), namely, to obtain an article of consumption different in kind to

that which he has exchanged, since in money there is no inherent difference of quality and

therefore whatever difference there may be must be one of quantity. Accordingly the object of

the exchanger in this second stage is amount, not kind. In going through his process of exchange

(the formula for which may be stated thus: C - M - C - M - C ), the second quantum of money

must be more than the first, or else he will have failed in his object; will have made a bad

bargain, as the phrase goes. On the other hand, though this form of exchange differs essentially it

nevertheless connects itself with the earlier form, in which money occurs only as the middle term

between commodity and commodity, thus distinguishing it from simple barter, because even in

the later form the result of the merchant's transaction is a commodity with which he intends to

begin a fresh transaction --

C - M - C - M - C.

This is the form of exchange which was the practice of the developed classical world in its

commercial operations. The break up of the Roman Empire, and the confusion that followed,

dislocated this commerce, and largely brought exchange back again to its earlier and simple form

of the exchange of a commodity for money with which to buy another commodity to be

consumed, which was for the most part the character of the exchange of the Middle Ages.

This second form of exchange leads without a break into the third or modern form of Capitalistic

Exchange, in which the exchanger, beginning with money, buys a commodity in order to

exchange it for money; which money, as in the foregoing stage, must be more in quantity than

that with which he began, or his transaction will be a failure. This process differs from that of the

last-mentioned stage of exchange in that the result of the transaction is always money, and not a

commodity (that is, a use-value), the latter in the long-run appearing only nominally in the

transaction.

To make this clearer, we may give concrete examples of the three forms of exchange:

In the first stage, illustrated by the proceedings of the Craftsman of the time of Homer, which

were pretty much those of the Mediæval Craftsman also, the village potter sold his pots and with

the money he got for them, which, possible trickery apart, represented just the value or embodied

labour of the pots, he bought meal, oil, wine, flesh, etc., for his own livelihood and consumed

them.

The merchant of the later classical period shipped, say, purple cloth from Sidon to Alexandria,

sold his cloth there, and with the money bought gum-Arabic (from the Soudan) and frankincense

(from Arabia), which he sold at Athens, where again he shipped oil for another market. He

always handled the actual goods he professed to trade in, and the wares which he thus exchanged

against the universal equivalent, money, were of various kinds. Similar commerce went on in the

Middle Ages, as with the merchants of Amalfii, Venice, etc., side by side with the primitive

exchange of the feudal manor, and the market- town with its corporation and gilds.

The modern man of Commerce necessarily begins his transaction with money. He buys, say,

indigo, which he never sees, receives for it more money than he gave for it, and goes on steadily

in this process, dealing (unlike the ancient carrier-merchant) with one class of goods only; and all

the goods in which he deals represent to him so much money: they are only present in his

transactions nominally. Money is the be-all and end-all of his existence as a commercial man.

This is an example of the pure form of capitalistic exchange, wherein money is exchanged for

commodities, and these again for money plus an increment; the formula for which, as given by

Marx, is M - C - M.

The next question we have to consider is how the surplus, the increment above-mentioned,

obtained by this process of exchange is realized, -- or, in plain language, where it comes from.

1. As a deduction from this, we may say that while on the one hand there was no abstract

necessity for the measure of value taking the form of gold, though there was a necessity for it to

take a form embodying a certain definite amount of labour; on the other hand, since it has taken

that form, labour notes, or mere promises to pay which are of no value in themselves, cannot as

long as exchange lasts take the place of gold, which is a commodity having a value in itself and

the particular commodity which has assumed that function through historical selectionback

.

2. There are transitional stages between barter pure and simple and exchange operated by a

universal equivalent, which only partly fulfiled (sic) this office: eg., cattle, in the primitive

ancient period, from which the name for money (pecunia) is derived; or ordinary woollen cloth,

as in the curious and rather elaborate currency of the Scandinavians before coin was struck in

Norway: which currency, by the way, has again, in the form of blankets, been used even in our

own times in the Hudson Bay Territory

Chapter 17 - Scientific Socialism - Conversion of Capital

into Money

Says Marx: 'The circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital: the production of

commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation called

commerce, these form the historical groundwork from which it rises. The modern history of

capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-

embracing market.

The great representative of this circulation is money, which is the first form in which capital

appears. In history, money presents itself to us as opposed to land: the merchant is opposed to the

landowner; an antithesis which struck people so much at one period that they expressed it by

means of a double proverb -- 'No land without a lord', and 'Money has no master'. This is, in fact,

another way of stating the antithesis between the Mediæval basis of property, viz., status, a

recognized position in the great feudal hierarchy, and contract, the commercial basis, on which is

built the position of the modern exploiter.

We must now see how capital is born, and the manner in which it works after it has been born.

It is born out of the operation expressed by the formula M -- C -- M, which we had to take note

of in our last chapter. The M in this operation, as we stated before, implies always quantity and

not quality; the second M not representing merely the money the operation was begun with, but

an increased sum, otherwise the operation would be meaningless. It remains to be seen how this

increase has taken place.

It cannot have happened by the mere process of exchange; because that would mean that the

whole capitalistic class was living by getting the better of the whole capitalistic class, which is

impossible. The increase of money in the capitalistic process must come out of the labouring or

productive class.

The modus operandi of this capital-making must now be noted. The labouring class is necessary

to the production of capital, and the labouring class in a peculiar condition: the labourer, to be

fitted for the purpose of the capitalist, must be submitted to the operation of the free competition

of the capitalist in the market; that is, his labour-power must be; for with the man himself of

course the capitalist has nothing whatever to do; neither will his own position as capitalist allow

him to consider himself as a man; according to the well-known proverb 'Business is business'.

This position of the labourer is what is understood by the phrase of a 'free labourer': his labour-

power must be bought and sold in the market on the same terms as any other commodity; there

must be no interference with his selling it at the price which it will fetch, a high price when the

competition among the capitalists is brisk, a low price when it is slack; and as he has no other

commodity to sell except his labour-power, he is compelled so to sell it -- to be a 'free labourer'.

It is clear that this relation between the capitalist and the labourer is a conventional and not a

natural one; nature does not produce men who from the first are possessors of money which it is

their business to turn into capital, nor on the other hand does she produce men who are

possessors of labour-power which they are compelled to sell in the free and open market to other

men. As a consequence this relation is not common to all historical periods; but has developed

from many economical revolutions, which have successively extinguished prior forms of social

production.

It will be seen, then, that in the fully developed commercial period the capitalist, the reason for

whose existence is the turning of money into capital, and who is the owner and the organizer of

the whole of production, cannot carry on his business without having ready to his hand a class

who are an adjunct of the machinery necessary to his business, and who, on their side, have no

other reason for existence, so long as they are duly obedient to the system under which they live,

save acting as such portion of this machinery.

We have now come to the subject of surplus-value, from which is derived profit, rent, and

interest. This will form the subject of our next chapter.

Chapter 18 - Scientific Socialism - The Production of

Surplus Value - That is, of Rent, Interest, and Profit

The problem to be resolved is as follows. The owner of money has to buy his commodities at

their value, and to sell them at their value, and nevertheless at the end of the process to realize a

surplus. This is the end and aim of his existence as a capitalist, and if he does not accomplish it,

he is as a capitalist a mere failure. So that his development from the mere money owner to the

full-blown capitalist has to take place at once within the sphere of circulation and without it: that

is, he must follow the law of the exchange of commodities, and nevertheless must act in apparent

contradiction to that law. This problem cannot be solved merely by means of the money which

he owns, the value of which is, so to say, petrified. As Ricardo says, 'In the form of money,

capital has no profit'. As money, it can only be hoarded.

Neither can the surplus originate in the mere re-sale of the commodity, 'which does no more than

transform the article from its bodily form back into its money form'. The only alternative left is

the change should originate in the use-value of the article bought with the money in the first

instance and on which the capitalist has to operate.

'In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend Moneybags

must be so lucky as to find within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity whose

use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption

therefore is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor

of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour, or labour-

power.'

By labour-power or the capacity for labour Marx understands the whole of the mental and

physical capacities in a human being which are brought into action in the production of

commodities; in short, the man and all that is in him as a wealth-producing machine.

Now in order that the possessor of money should find this necessity to the accomplishment of his

end and aim - viz., labour-power as a commodity of the market, various conditions are requisite.

The man who is to exercise the labour-power for the capitalists' benefit -- the labourer -- must be

'free', that is, his labour must be at his own disposal, and also he must have nothing else to

dispose of for his livelihood but his labour-power. On the other hand, any one who has to live by

getting commodities other than labour-power must own the means of production, and also the

means of subsistence while the commodities are being got ready for the market, and being

converted into money.

As to the value of this article necessary to the life of the capitalist, this labour-power, it is

estimated like the value of every other commodity by the average time necessary for its

production or reproduction; that is the average time necessary in a given state of society; and in

plain language this reproduction of labour-power means the maintenance of the labourer. 'Given

the individual, the production of labour-power consists in the reproduction of himself -- or his

maintenance.'

Labour-power is realized only in action, that is, when it has become actual labour, and is

producing a commodity; so that, 'the value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a

definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of those means, or

with the quantity of labour requisite for their production'.

The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is therefore determined by the value of these

means. If the price of labour-power falls below that minimum it is destroyed: a haggling as to its

price has to be gone through between the buyer and the seller, and the price is fixed by contract,

though it is not realized until the article is consumed. From what is stated above, it will be seen

that this contract is made between two parties; on the one hand the workman, or machine for

production, who has no means of producing, on the other the possessor of money who has all the

means necessary for working the machine and has therefore become a capitalist. 'He who was

before the money-owner now strides in front as a capitalist: the possessor of labour-power

follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other

timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market, and has nothing to

expect but -- a hiding.'

The labour process necessary to Capitalism exhibits two characteristic phenomena: first the

labourer works under the control of a capitalist, and secondly the product of the labourer is the

property of a capitalist, and not of the labourer, its immediate producer. This product

appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, 'as for example yarn, or boots'; says Marx with a

grin, 'but although boots are in one sense the basis of all social progress and our capitalist is a

decided 'progressist', the capitalist does not for his special purpose look upon them as boots, or

any other use-value. He has primarily two objects in view: first he wants to produce a use-value,

not, again, for the sake of its use, but in order that he may exchange it; and next, in order that his

exchange may be fruitful to him, he wants to produce a commodity the value of which shall be

greater than the sum of the values used in producing it -- that is, the means of production and the

labour-power.'

This he is able to accomplish as follows. He buys the use of the labour-power of the workman

for a day, while a certain duration of labour in the day is enough to reproduce the workman's

expended labour-power -- that is, to keep him alive. But the human machine is in all cases

capable of labouring for more hours in the day than is necessary for this result, and the contract

between the capitalist and the labourer as understood in the system under which those two

classes exist implies that the exercise of the day's labour-power shall exceed this duration

necessary for reproduction, and it is a matter of course that the buyer of the commodity labour-

power should do as all buyers of commodities do -- consume it altogether for his own

advantage(1)

.

It is on this industry, the buying of labour-power in the market, and the consumption of all the

results of its exercise beyond what is necessary for its reproduction, that the capitalist lives, just

as the industry by which the workman lives is the production of commodities.

1. Says Mr Boffin in [Charles] Dicken's Mutual Friend, when he wants to make a show of

striking a somewhat hard, but reasonable bargain: 'When I buy a sheep I buy it out and out, and

when I buy a secretary I expect to buy him out and out', or words to that effect; and the

reasonableness of the conditions are accepted on all hands

Chapter 19 - Scientific Socialism - Constant and Variable

Capital

Marx goes on to develope (sic) further the process by which the capitalist exploits the labourer

under the present system of wages and capital.

We now come to the two instruments which the capitalist uses in his exploitation of labour, and

which are named constant and variable capital; constant capital being the raw material and

instruments of production, and variable the labour power to be employed in producing on and by

means of the former.

The labourer, as we have seen, adds a value to the raw material upon which he works; but by the

very act of adding a new value he preserves the old; in one character he adds new value, in

another he merely preserves what already existed. He affects this by working in a particular way,

eg., by spinning, weaving, or forging, that is, he transforms things which are already utilities into

new utilities proportionately greater than they were before.

'It is thus', says Marx, 'that the cotton and spindle, the yarn and the loom, the iron and the anvil

become constituent elements of a new use-value.'

That is, in order to acquire this new value, the labour must be directed to a socially useful end, to

a general end, that is, to which the general labour of society is directed, and the value added is to

be measured by the average amount of labour power expended; i.e., by the duration of the

average time of labour.

Marx says: 'We have seen that the means of production transfer value to the new product so far

only as during the labour-process they lose value in the shape of their old use-value. The

maximum loss of value that they can suffer in the process is plainly limited by the amount of the

original value with which they came into the process, or in other words by the labour-time

necessary for their production. Therefore, the means of production can never add more value to

the product than they themselves possess independently of the process in which they assist.

However useful a given kind of raw material, or a machine, or other means of production may

be, though it may cost £150, or say 500 days labour, yet it cannot under any circumstances add to

the value of the product more than £150. Its value is determined not by the labour-process into

which it enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued as a product. In

the labour process it only serves as a mere use-value, a thing with useful properties, and could

not therefore transfer any value to the product unless it possessed such value previously.'

The matter is succinctly put as follows: 'The means of production on the one hand, labour-power

on the other, are merely the different modes of existence which the value of the original capital

assumed when from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour

process. That part of capital which is represented by the means of production, by the raw

material, auxiliary material, and the instruments of labour, does not in the process of production

undergo any quantitative alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or

more shortly constant capital.'

At first sight it might be thought that the wear and tear of the machinery, and the seeming

disappearance of part of the auxiliary material (as eg., the mordaunts used in dyeing cloth or

yarn, or the gums, etc., used in textile printing) contradict this statement as to the alteration of

value; but on closer view it will be seen that the above wear and tear and apparent consumption

enter into the new product just as much as the visible raw material does; neither are really

consumed, but transformed.

In the following chapters Marx enters into an elaborate and exhaustive analysis of the rate of

surplus value, ie., of the rate at which the creation of surplus value takes place; and he also deals

with the important subject of the duration of the working-day. But as this is after all a matter of

detail, in spite of its very great interest and importance we must omit it, as it would carry us

beyond the scope of these articles.

Marx distinguishes between absolute and relative 'surplus value'; the absolute being the product

of a day's labour over and above the necessary subsistence of the workman, whatever the time

necessary for the production of a definite amount of product may be. The relative 'surplus-value'

on the other hand is determined by the increased productivity of labour caused by new

inventions, machinery, increased skill, either in manipulation, or the organization of labour, by

which the time necessary for the production of the labourer's means of subsistence may be

indefinitely shortened.

It will be seen once again by all this, that whatever instruments may be put into the hands of the

labourer to bring about a result from his labour, in spite of all pretences to the contrary, the one

instrument necessary to the capitalist is the labourer himself living under such conditions that he

can be used as a mere instrument for the production of profit. The tools, machinery, factories,

means of exchange, etc., are only intermediate aids for putting the living machine into operation.

Commonweal, Volume 3, Number 75, 18 June 1887, PP. 196-197

Chapter 20 - Marx's Deduction of the Historical Evolution of

Modern Industry

Capitalism cannot be said even to begin before a number of individual owners of money employ

simultaneously a number of workmen on the same terms, that is to say before the development of

a concert of action towards profit among the employers, and a concert of action towards

production for the profit of the employers among the employed.

'A greater number of labourers working together at the same time in one place (or if you will, in

the same field of labour) in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of

one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically the starting-point of capitalist

prodiuction.'

It differs from the mediæval system, that of the gilds and their craftsmen only by the greater

number of the workmen employed; but this change to a new form of organization made at once

considerable difference in the rate and manner of production: there was less comparative expense

of the means of production, ie., buildings, tools, warehouses, etc(1)

. A consequence of this

concentration of workmen under one roof was the development of the function of direction in the

master as independent of his qualities as a craftsmen (sic), and the forcing on the system of this

function as a necessary part of production. The master of the gild craftsman period held his place

because he was a better workman and more experienced than his fellows; he did not differ from

them in kind but in degree only; if he fell sick, for instance, his place would be taken by the next

best workman without any disturbance in the organization of the workshop; but the master of

even the earliest period of capitalism was from the beginning unimportant as a workman (even

when he worked, as he often did at first) but all-important as a director of work.

'Simple co-operation', says Marx, 'is always the prevailing form, in those branches of production

in which capital acts on a large scale, and division of labour and machinery play but a

subordinate part.' This sentence leads to the next development of capitalism, that of the division

of labour, which brings us into the system of manufacture, as the word is generally understood;

though it has a final development, that of machinery and the factory. This period of the division

of labour, more or less pure, extends from the middle of the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries,

when it was brought to perfection; but it must be understood that these systems overlapped one

another considerably.

The division-of-labour or manufacturing system starts under two conditions.

The first is where the employer collects into one workshop workmen of various crafts, the results

of whose labours are finally combined into one article, as eg., a carriage-maker's in which wheel-

wright, coach-builder, upholsterer, painter, etc., work each at his own occupation, and their

products are combined into the one article, a finished carriage.

The other is the system in which the employer collects his workmen under one roof, and employs

the whole of them as one machine in the simultaneous production of one article which has to go

through various processes, these processes being apportioned to various parts of the workman-

machine. This system affords a distinct example of evolution by means of survival of the fittest;

sudden increase of production seems to have been called for, and the work accordingly had to be

reorganized by being apportioned to different workmen in order to save time. Thus this system is

the reverse of that illustrated by the carriage-making, in which a number of crafts had to be

combined into the manufacture of one article; whereas in this (pin or needle-making may be

taken as an illustration) a number of processes which once formed portions of one craft, now

become each of them a separate craft in itself.

From this follows the complete interdependence of each human being forming a part of the

workman machine, no one of whom can produce anything by himself. The unit of labour is now

no longer an individual, but a group.

But all these processes, however sub-divided, and however combined, were still acts of

handicraft; the same necessities which forced the simple co-operation of the first capitalistic

period into division of labour, now forced the latter system to yet further development; though,

indeed, other causes besides merely economic ones were at work, such as the growing

aggregation of people into towns and the consequent increasing division of labour in Society

itself as to the occupations of its members. This final development was the substitution of the

machine and the complete factory-system for the division of labour and workshop-system. Under

the new system the group of workmen, every member of which by the performance of a special

piece of handicraft turns out some special part of the article made, gives place to a machine

which produces the results of all these manoeuvres combined together; or to an association of

machines acting in a group, as the workmen acted. The workman is no longer the principal factor

in the work, the tools which he handled are now worked by a mechanism connected by another

mechanism with the power, whatever it may be, which puts the whole in motion. This is the true

machine of modern times, as contrasted with the mere tool-machine of the earlier period, which

was an aid to the workman and not a substitute for him. Furthermore, the workshop gives place

to the factory which is not a mere assemblage of machines under one roof, but rather a great

machine itself, of which the machines are parts; as Marx says: 'An organized system of machines

to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism from a central automaton is the

most developed form of production by machinery. Here we have in place of the isolated machine

a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demon power, at first veiled

under the slow and measured motion of his giant limbs, at last breaks out into the fast and furious

whirl of his countless working organs.'

This is the machine which has produced the great revolution in production of our epoch. The

workman once a handicraftsman, having all control over the article he produced, next became a

part of a human machine, and finally has become the servant and tender of a machine; and by

means of all this the fully developed modern capitalist has come into existence.

1. The master worker of the gild-system was not really a master at all even after he began to

employ journeymen, because their number was limited veryy closely, and they were all sure to

become masters in their turn: the reall 'employer of labour' was the gild and the 'master' of that

period was simply a foreman of the gild; the great change consisted in the breaking down of the

position of the gild as employer, and the turning of its foreman into a real master or capitalist

Chapter 21 - Scientific Socialism: Conclusion

Marx now goes on to trace the development of the capitalist in the present epoch, indicating the

latest phase of the class-struggle; he points out the strife of the workman with the machine, the

intensification of labour due to the constant improvement of machinery, etc. He then gives what

may be called a history and analysis of the Factory Acts, the legislation to which the employing

class found themselves compelled, in order to make it possible for the 'free' workman to live

under his new conditions of competition; in order, in short, to keep the industrial society founded

by the machine revolution from falling to pieces almost as soon as it was established.

The point of the intensification of labour is so important that it demands a word or two in

passing; the gist of the matter as put forward by Marx resolves itself into this: As the

organization of production progresses towards perfection, the wear and tear of the workman in a

given space of labour-time is increased; and this is true of the organization of the division of

labour period, only it is limited by the fact that the man himself is the machine, and no such

limitation exists in the period of fully developed machinery, in which the workman is an adjunct

of the machine, which latter dictates to its supplement, the workman, in its constant craving for

increasing productivity, the amount of wear and tear of his body in each hour's work. This

emphasizes as plainly as possible the subjection of the man to the machine.

Marx also deals with theory of compensation to the workman displaced by machinery; that is, the

common view, that by the labour-saving of machinery, which at first sight would seem to tend to

the lessening of the number of men employed, more capital is set free for employment.

But, says Marx: 'Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen at £30 a-year each in a carpet

factory. The variable capital annually laid out amounts therefore to £3,000. Suppose also that he

discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him

£1,500. To simplify matters we take no account of buildings, coal, etc. Further, suppose that the

raw material annually consumed costs £3,000 both before and after the change. Is any capital set

free by this metamorphosis? Before the change the total sum of £6,000 consisted half of

constant, half of variable, capital. The variable capital, instead of being one-half is only one-

quarter of the total capital. Instead of being set free a part of the capital is here locked up in such

a way as to cease to be employed in labour-power; variable has been changed into constant

capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of £6,000 can in future employ no more

than 50 men. With each improvement in machinery, it will employ fewer.'(1)

And again: 'The labourers when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon

the labour-market, and there add to the number of workmen at the disposal of the capitalists. In

Part VII of this book it will be seen that this effect of machinery, which as we have seen, is

represented to be a compensation to the working-class, is on the contrary a most frightful

scourge. For the present, I will only say this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in any

branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and

thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the

intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the

intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them, and was afterwards converted into

machinery.'

The remainder of this Part V of Marx deals with various questions connected with the great

industry, and the changes produced by it on Society. Part VI deals with the transformation of the

value or price of labour-power into wages; with time wages, price wages, and the national

difference of wages. Part VII deals with the important subject of the accumulation of capital:

First, with its simple reproduction, afterwards with the conversion of surplus value itself back

into capital, and with the transition of the laws of property, that characterize the production of

commodities into the laws of capitalistic appropriation. This part also contains a sarcastic

refutation of the now exploded stupidity (scarcely to be called a theory) of 'abstinence' as the

source of capital; it also deals with the old wages-fund theory and other fallacies of bourgeois

economy. This part concludes with a long and elaborate chapter on the general law of capitalistic

accumulation in its various aspects. The last Part (XIII) treats of the so-called primitive

accumulation, of which Marx says: 'This primitive accumulation plays in political economy

about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell upon

the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past.

In times long gone by there were two sorts of people, one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all,

frugal élité; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance and more in riotous living. The

legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man is to be condemned to eat his bread

in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are

people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former

sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And

from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority, that, despite all its labour, has up to

now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they

have long ceased to work.... In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery,

murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic

reigns from time immemorial. Right and 'labour' were from all time the sole means of

enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of

primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.'

Marx then proceeds to give an instance of one important form of 'Primitive Accumulation', the

expropriation of the peasants from the land, taking affairs in England as a type of this idyllic

proceeding; as also the legislation at the close of the Middle Ages against vagrants, etc., that is,

those who had been expropriated; and, besides, the enactments for the forcing down of wages.

He then describes the birth of the capitalist farmer of modern times, and the reaction of the

agricultural revolution on the town industry; the creation of the home market for industrial

capital, etc. A chapter follows on the historical tendency of capitalistic accumu- lation to work

out its own contradiction; it becomes necessary to quote a passage here as it bears reference to

the future of Society: 'The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of

production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private

property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalistic production begets with the

inexorability of a law of Nature its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-

establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the

acquisitions of the capitalistic era; i.e., on co-operation, and the possession in common of the

land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising

from individual labour(2)

, into capitalistic private property, is naturally a procession comparably

more protracted[,] violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property,

already practically resting on socialized production, into socialized property. In the former case

we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the

expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.'

A chapter on the modern theory of colonization concludes the book, which it must always be

remembered is but the first volume (in the original German issue) of a book intended to cover

three volumes, but which, nevertheless, as a criticism of capitalistic production may be treated in

most respects as an independent whole.

1. Constant capital, raw material, and the instruments of production; variable capital, money paid

in wagesback

.

2. It is important not to misunderstand this phrase as used here. The labour of the Middle Ages,

though individual from its mechanical side, was from its moral side quite definitely dominated

by the principle of association: as we have seen, the 'master' of that period was but a delegate of

the Gild

Chapter 22 - Socialism Militant [Part 1]

We have now arrived at the most exciting part of our subject, since it has to do with what we

may fairly call the practical politics of Socialism, with matters which all who call themselves

Socialists must of necessity consider, unless they chose to relegate themselves to the position of

theorists pure and simple. What lies in the scope of these chapters is the giving some idea of the

relative position of the attack and defence in the passing time, when armies are definitely

gathering for the battle, and it is beginning to be perceived that Socialism is the one serious

question of the epoch, since it covers every interest of modern life.

Let us turn our attention first of all to the defence; and we use the word advisedly, since the

present proprietary and dominant class has absorbed into itself its old enemy the feudal

proprietary class, and, since it has now no longer anything to attack, has taken the position once

occupied by the latter. This indeed has been the position of the victorious middle-class for some

time, but it is now at last waking up to the fact, and can see the enemy which is advancing to the

attack. The middle-class is speedily getting to be no longer democratic even in appearance: it

once wore that guise because it was confounded with the working-classes, whose position was

then entirely subordinate to it. This condition of things was the high-water mark of the French

Revolution, though there were from time to time indications of the coming solidarity of labour;

and it lasted through the revolutionary period of 1848. Up to that time the triumphant middle-

class, trampling down the last embers of the feudal opposition, saw nothing before it but a

continued career of success; although the principles on which that success was founded were not

of the kind that would allow it to have a definite aim beyond the point which it had already

reached.

The first distinctive movement in England betokening a separate and aggressive community of

feeling in the working-class itself, was the Chartist agitation; but this, as we have pointed out in

preceding chapters, was swept away by the great wave of British commercial prosperity

indicated by the success of the Cobden-Bright, or as it is called on the Continent, the Manchester

School. The main result of this wave of prosperity was the enormous increase in the number and

power of the middle-classes, and the corresponding rise in their standard of comfort. It is often

alleged that the working-classes are in a better position than they were fifty years ago, and that

this is the main work of the nineteenth century; but the improvement is doubtful and the

inference drawn from it is false. The fact is, that the country fifty years ago was passing through

a severe commercial revolution, that of the great machine industries, which, as before stated,

brought for the time unexampled misery upon the workers, and that the settling down of this

crisis did to a certain extent relieve this special and temporary misery. But apart from that the

condition of even the aristocracy of labour is little if any better than it was. What has really

happened is just that increase in the numbers and prosperity of the middle-classes above spoken

of. But this great and overwhelming prosperity of theirs is now seriously threatened. The

increasing severity of competition in the world-market, accompanied by a ceaseless and rapid

increase in the productivity of labour, acting and reacting on one another, are bringing about a

fresh commercial revolution which will extinguish the small capitalist by reducing his profits to

the vanishing-point; so that none but huge concerns, joint-stock or otherwise, will be able to

survive, and the once small capitalist will have to become a manager, a servant of the great one.

This process is already far advanced, and is creating a fresh lower middle-class entirely

dependent on the commercial aristocracy. Under these conditions that very rise in the standard of

middle-class comfort has become a snare to the class as a whole. The difficulty of ordinary well-

to-do families in finding a 'respectable' position for their children is now a sufficiently trite

subject; all occupations endurable by a 'refined' youth are overstocked; education is cheap and

common, and has lost its old market-value, and even at the ancient seats of learning it has grown

to be a matter of commercial competition(1)

. The lower ranks of art and literature are crowded

with persons drawn to these professions by the pleasantness of the pursuits in themselves, who

soon find out the very low market value of the ordinary educated intellect. These, together with

the commercial clerks, in whose occupation no special talent is required, form an intellectual

proletariat, whose labour is 'rewarded' on about the same scale as the lower portion of manual

labour, as long as they are employed, but whose position is more precarious, and far less

satisfactory.

On the whole, then, in spite of the rise in the standard of comfort of the middle-classes, it must

be said that they have rather gained power than well-being, and that they are now being

threatened with a loss of that power, their tenure of which, now that the working-classes are

beginning to learn their solidarity, depends on the latter being apathetically contented with a

position at the best inferior to that of the bourgeoisie.

But the bourgeois ideal of what that position of the workers might be at the best, has never been

realized, nor ever can be; nor as above-said have the working-classes any special reason for

being 'contented' at the present time. The class of unskilled labourers are still, as they always

must be in a system which forces them to compete with their fellows, in the position of earning a

bare subsistence wage; and this class tends to increase more and more, as the introduction of

fresh machines increases the productivity of skilled labour, makes it possible to substitute

unskilled in its place, and thus drives the skilled artizan from his position and compels him to

accept that of the unskilled labourer.

Elaborately arranged figures, therefore, by which is sought to show that the workmen in general

are steadily improving their condition, where in themselves correct, which is by no means always

the case, are only applicable to certain groups of workmen, and even then frequently do not

prove what they are intended to: eg., the average wages will be stated at such and such, but it

never happens in any trade that all the workmen receive the full amount of the wages stated after

all deductions are made; few workmen indeed are in constant employment, even when trade is

flourishing; the estimated prices are the full wage laid down by the trade unions, but most

workers unprotected by a union, and in bad times even men inside the union, often work for less

than the full wage; some, as in the building trades, are never employed for a large part of the

year; and in all trades it would be impossible to keep up the standard of wages without

occasional strikes and lock outs. It must be remembered, too, that the workman is often taxed in

the form of his subscription to his trades union or benefit society, which from one point of view

means that he helps his master to pay his poor-rate. Moreover it is doubtful if the unions are

strong enough pecuniarily to hold out against a continued depression of trade.

However, the question of this doubtful improvement in the position of the better-off workmen is

by the way. The real point is, first, that there are many indications that this improvement cannot

be sustained in the face of the continuous increase in the productivity of labour, and that the

position of the skilled mechanic is a precarious one; and secondly, it is clear that however the

workmen's position may have improved, they are growing discontented with it, since it is

becoming manifest to them that it is one of inferiority, and quite unnecessarily so. And that

especially since the management of production is less and less undertaken by the so-called

manufacturers, who are more and more becoming mere financiers, or shareholders obviously

living on the privilege of taxing labour, both that of the 'hand' and of the manager.

All this has been gradually dawning on the workmen of the Continent, and especially of

Germany (so much more intellectually advanced than the British workmen) since the bourgeois

constitutional revolution of '48.

1.A very old friend, who has been for many years engaged in tuition at Oxford, has told me that

the pressure there has enormously increased since I was an undergraduate; that for instance the

kind of man whose attainments would once have ensured him a mastership at Rugby or Harrow

has now to put up with a place at a third-rate grammar school, and that the competition for quite

insignificant posts is most severe. -W. M

Chapter 22 - Socialism Militant [Part 2]

The movement was begun in Germany by Lassalle (1)

about 1863 as a national movement; it

grew in that form after his death for some years. Meantime 'the International' had been founded,

and had gradually come under the guidance of Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, who won for

themselves two energetic and able coadjutors in Liebnecht and Bebel, men untiring in gaining

converts to the ideas of the International from the followers of Lassalle and of Schulze- Delitsch,

the bourgeois co-operationist, to which latter party indeed Bebel himself once belonged.

The scope of this article prevents us from going into details as to the fortunes of the German

party; it must be enough to say that the Marx party grew rapidly, and at the congress of Gotha in

1875 the Lassalle party amalgamated with them, formally renouncing the special tenets of

Lassalle, notably the nationalist aims which formed a part of them. The party went on growing,

and had a large newspaper press and some representation in the Reichstag. Then in 1878 came

the 'attempts' on the Emperor by Hodel and Nobeling, followed by the repressive laws against

the Socialists, which destroyed their press at one swoop, and extinguished all open agitation in

Germany. Nevertheless the growth of the party was not perceptibly checked by these arbitrary

measures; the headquarters of its direction were transferred to Zurich, where they yet remain. At

the Congress held last October at St Gallen the revolutionary character of the party was

sustained, in the teeth of some attempts at opportunism which came from a section of the

representatives in the Reichstag. The temptation to this opportunism was the desire of some of

the deputies to make the party felt in the Reichstag by forming alliances with other groups,

whereas at present as a Socialist party they are quite powerless there. It may be added that there

is a possibility in Germany, as in France, of a wave of 'patriotism', founded on fear of the danger

of actual invasion, checking for a time the rapidity of the advance of Socialism; though in the

party itself the feeling for interna- tionalism is overwhelming and past all question.

France has for the present rather fallen back from her position of leader in the revolutionary

movement. The party itself is somewhat split up into sections, though the differences between

rank and file are not serious and mainly have to do with matters of tactics. Socialist ideas have

permeated the whole mass of the town workmen, who are more separated from the peasantry

than in any other European country. The fact is, therefore, that the movement in France, though

unorganized, still expands, especially as it is spreading to all manufacturing centres. In France

Socialism is not definitely attacked by the government as it is in Germany, but only suffers, as it

does in this country, from the ordinary repressive police system.

In Holland the movement, which has now reached extraordinary dimensions, was begun in the

year 1882. The propaganda has been mainly the work of Domela Nieuwenhuis, formerly a

popular preacher in Amsterdam, released recently from a term of imprisonment. The police in

Holland have gone so far in attacking the Socialists as to stir up mob violence against them, even

to the extent of breaking into their meeting places and threatening the lives of their leaders.

In Belgium the movement is progressing vigorously, in the teeth of the two opposed parties, and

the feeling of the workmen generally is very revolutionary, stimulated especially by the

miserable condition of the mining population, who in 1886 broke out into riots that almost

attained to the proportions of a revolt. The party supports a daily paper in Brussels.

In Denmark, the movement is so far advanced as to support two daily papers of large circulation,

in spite of the smallness of the population. No doubt it is much helped there by the curious

constitutional situation in which the Liberal majority and the Court party are holding each other

at deadlock. This Danish movement has even penetrated to Sweden, and a Socialist party is

growing up there.

In Russia, bureaucratic absolutism is blended with survivals of the mere barbaric absolutism, and

as a consequence of the monstrous government which results from this, the movement seems

now to be aiming at bringing about a constitutional revolution as a forerunner of the Social

Revolution; and on the other hand this condition of things has so worked on the aspirations of the

intelligent part of the people, that the movement there has been surrounded by a halo of personal

heroism which has attracted universal admiration and respect even from its enemies.

In Austria, the faith of the masses generally is Socialism, but owing partly to the composite

character of the Empire, which embraces such varied and rival races, and partly to the severity of

the police measures of its Absolutist Government, there is no definite organization.

In Italy, the movement is progressing, although hampered by the tail of the democratic, and

especially the Mazzinian, ideas, which can see nothing beyond the abolition of priest and king.

In Spain, the followers of Bakounine's Anarchism have had much influence, and the movement

consequently is mostly Anarchist in colouring. The party supports several small weekly papers.

In America, the movement till recently has been entirely in the hands of the German immigrants;

but of late years there has been a remarkable development of the class- struggle there. The result

of numerous and most violent disputes between the capitalists and wage-earners has been the

formation of an indigenous labour party, vague in aim and somewhat chaotic in action, but

tending steadily towards a complete recognition of the solidarity of labour. The publication of

Henry George's work, 'Progress and Poverty', which created such [a] sensation in this country,

unsatisfactory as it was, has no doubt had its effect upon this movement, though its author in his

quest for power and position has now practically recanted whatever opinions were of any value

in it. One incident in the American movement is the formation of the gigantic trades' union called

the Knights of Labour, which has more definite tendencies towards Socialism than those in this

country; though Powderly's coquetting with the Catholic hierarchy has led to a split in the body,

which leads to a hope that true Socialism may soon be generally accepted amongst the American

working-classes. This will certainly be encouraged by the last act of the American capitalists,

who in their dastardly fear of the possible combination of their wage-slaves, have murdered the

Anarchist leaders at Chicago under the pretence of their being concerned in the throwing of a

bomb-shell in the heat of a desperate labour- conflict in that city.

To get back again to this country, the movement is spreading much beyond the limits of the

definite Socialist organizations, which are for the most part headquarters for knots of lecturers

and speakers, and the publication of journals and pamphlets. In fact, it may be said that the

strength of the movement here is on the intellectual side, and that organization for action of any

kind is very defective. Nevertheless, Socialist opinion is making itself felt widely as well as

deeply; this is very marked in the effect it is having on the Radicals, since it is detaching a

constantly increasing number of them from their old position as the left wing of the Liberals,

which whom and under whose orders they have hitherto acted since the time when Gladstone

became the leader of the party. The Irish movement being at bottom a rebellion, and illustrating

very strongly one side of the economical disabilities of the working-classes, has done much to

widen the breach between the Democratic Radicals and the Liberal Radicals, and has made them

much more ready to listen to Socialist doctrines. The Trades' Unions also, which have acted as a

safety valve for the discontent born of the economical situation, have been much shaken by the

attention which so many of their members have given to Socialism, and show signs of a growing

inclination to change their position from being a mere appendage to capitalism to being organi-

zations for a definite attack upon it. The dead weight of their leaders, who look upon this feeling

with the utmost disfavour, and have done their best to smother it, hampers the possible

development of the Trades' Unions in this direction; but it ever breaks through these and other

obvious obstacles. They will become most formidable allies of Socialism in this country. It must

be remembered in estimating the force of the movement in the British Islands, that all this is

taking place in a country which, whatever its economical position may be, is politically,

ethically, and intellectually generally the headquarters of reaction.

11 Lassalle was killed in a duel in 1865.

Chapter 23 - Socialism Triumphant [Part 1]

It is possible to succeed in a manner in picturing to ourselves the life of past times: that is, our

imaginations will show us a picture of them which may include such accurate information as we

may have of them. But though the picture may be vivid and the information just, yet it will not

be a picture of what really took place; it will be made up of the present which we experience, and

the past which our imagination, drawing from our experience, conceives of, -- in short, it will be

our picture of the past(1)

. If this be the case with the past, of which we have some concrete data,

still more strongly may it be said of the future, of which we have none -- nothing but mere

abstract deductions from historic evolution, the logical sequence of which may be interfered with

at any point by elements whose force we have not duly appreciated; and these are abstractions

also which are but the skeleton of the full life which will go on in those times to come.

Therefore, though we have no doubt of the transformation of modern civilization into Socialism,

yet we cannot foretell definitely what form the social life of the future will take, any more than a

man living at the beginning of the commercial period -- say Sir Thomas More or Lord Bacon --

could foresee the development of that period in the capitalism of to-day.

Nevertheless, though we cannot realize positively the life of the future, when the principle of real

society will be universally admitted, and applied in practice as an everyday matter, yet the

negative side of the question we can all see, and most of us cannot help trying to fill up the void

made by the necessary termination of the merely militant period of Socialism. The present

society will be gone, with all its paraphernalia of checks and safeguards: that we know for

certain. No less surely we know what the foundation of the new society will be. What will the

new society build on that foundation of freedom and co-operation? -- that is the problem on

which we can do no more than speculate.

No doubt some transition, the nature of which will be determined by circumstances, will take

place between the present state of things, in which the political unit is a nation, and the future, in

which a system of federalized communities will take the place of rival nationalities; but as this

chapter has to do with the ultimate realization of the new society rather than with the transitional

period, we need not speculate on this point.

We ask our readers to imagine the new society in its political aspect as an organized body of

communities, each carrying on its own affairs, but united by a delegated federal body, whose

function would be the guardianship of the acknowledged principles of society; it being

understood that these two bodies, the township or community and the Federal Power, would be

the two extremities between which there would be other expressions of the Federal principle, --

as in districts that were linked together by natural circumstances, such as language, climate, or

the divisions of physical geography.

It is clear that in such a society what laws were needed for the protection of persons and the

regulation of intercommunal disputes, since they could be but the expression of the very root

principles of society, would have to be universal, and the central regulating body would be

charged with their guardianship, and at a last resort to carrying them out by force. Obviously no

community could be allowed to revert to the exploitation of labour of any kind under whatever

pretext, or to such forms of reaction as vindictive criminal laws. Such measures if allowed, even

as local and spasmodic incidents, would undermine the very foundations of communistic society.

This unity in Federation in short, appears to be the only method for reducing complexity in

political and administrative matters to a minimum; and of ensuring to the individual, as a unit of

society, the utmost possible freedom for the satisfaction and development of his capacities.

As to the methods of labour necessary to the existence and welfare of society, it would have to

be co-operative in the widest sense. It would of course be subordinate to the real welfare of

society; i.e., the production of wares would not be looked upon as the end of society (as the

production of profit-bearing wares now is), but it would be regarded as the means for the ease

and happiness of life, which therefore would never be sacrificed to any false ideas of necessity,

or to any merely conventional views of comfort or luxury. For instance, in any society it is

desirable that cotton cloth should be produced at the least expenditure of labour, but in a

communistic society it would be impossible to condemn a part of the population to live under

miserable conditions, conditions in any degree worse than that of others, as in a black country, in

order to reduce the expenditure of labour for the community, which would have to pay the price

for giving the weavers and spinners, etc., as good a life as anyone else, whatever that price might

be.

Again, as to the conventional standard of comfort: we may here quote a good definition of a

luxury, as given by a friend, as a piece of goods that the consumer would not have if he had in

his own person to pay the full value of the work -- i.e., if he had to make it himself, or to

sacrifice an amount of his own labour equivalent to the making of it. As, eg., a lady of the

present day would hardly consent to make a Mechlin lace veil for herself, or to pay for the due

and proper livelihood of those who do make it; in order that she may have it, numbers of women

and girls at Ypres and the neighbourhood must work at starvation wages.

To make the matter of production under Communism clearer let us consider the various kinds of

work which the welfare of Communal Society would demand.

First, there would be a certain amount of necessary work to be done which would be usually

repellant to ordinary persons; some of this, probably the greater part of it, would be performed by

machinery; and it must be remembered that machinery would be improved and perfected without

hesitation when the restrictions laid on production by the exigencies of profit-making were

removed. But probably a portion of this work at once necessary and repellant could not be done

by machinery. For this portion volunteers would have to be relied upon; nor would there be any

difficulty in obtaining them, considering that the habit of looking upon necessary labour from the

point of view of social duty would be universal, and that now, as then, idiosyncrasies would exist

which would remove objections to work usually disliked.

Again, the greater part of this work, though not agreeable, would not be exacting on mental

capacity, and would entail the minimum of responsibility on those engaged in it. We mention

this as compensatory of the disagreeable nature of the work in itself.

As examples of this necessary and usually repellant work, we may give scavengering, sewer-

cleaning, coal-hewing, midwifery, and mechanical clerk's work.

It must be remembered again that under our present system a great deal of this kind of work is

artificially fostered for the sake of making business for interest-bearing capital, and that the

competition for employment amongst the proletariat makes it possible to be so done; whereas in

a Communal Society such work would be dispensed with as much as possible. Disagreeable

work which a Communal Society found itself saddled with as a survival of past times, and which

it found out not to be necessary, it would get rid of altogether.

Secondly, work in itself more or less disagreeable, and not absolutely necessary, but desirable if

the sacrifice to be paid for it were not too great. This might be done if it could be made easy by

machinery, but not otherwise; it would not be worth while to call for volunteers for the purpose

of doing it, since the citizens would then have to make the sacrifice in their own persons. Before

we leave the subject of work not generally pleasant, but which is either necessary or desirable,

we may again call attention to the existence of idiosyncrasies which would make many people

willing to undertake it, and still more to the variety of tastes which are so common that they

could not be classed as idiosyncrasies, and which would help us out of many difficulties in this

respect. There are, for instance, rough occupations involving a certain amount of hardship, which

would be acceptable to many persons of overflowing health and strength, on account of the

adventure and change which goes with them, and the opportunities which they afford for

showing courage and adroitness and readiness; in a word, for the pleasurable exercise of special

energies, such as sea-fishing, exploration of new countries, etc. Again, many people have so

much love for country life and dealing with animals, that even hard work of this kind would not

seem irksome to them. In short, we might go into great lengths on this subject, and every step we

took on the road would show that the stimulus to exertion in production is much more various

and much more complex than is usually thought in a period like our own, when everything is

supposed to be measured by mere cash-payment.

Thirdly, we come to a kind of work which we may well hope will take a much higher position in

communal life than it does at present; we mean work that has in it more or less of art; and we

should here say that the very foundation of everything that can be called art is the pleasure of

creation, which is, or should be felt in every handicraft. That even as things are it is very

commonly felt, is proved by the craving that persons have for some occupation for their hands

when they are debarred from their usual occupation, as very notably persons in prison. As to the

matter of art as an occupation, we may divide it into incidental and substantive art. Incidental art

is that which is subservient to some utilitarian function; as the designed form or added ornament

in a knife or a cup, which is subservient to the cutting or drinking use of those things. What is

commonly called decorative art comes under this heading. Substantive art is that which produces

matters of beauty and incident for their own sakes, such as pictures or music, which have no

utilitarian purpose. As to incidental art Commercial Society has nearly destroyed it by divorcing

its exercise and the reward for it from the products which it should beautify; it has divided the

producers of an ornamental article of use into the maker of the utilitarian article, the maker of the

ornament for it, and the designer of the ornament, the two former being mere machines, and the

latter being the producer of a marketable ware to be forced on the public in the same way that

other wares are forced on them by commerce. In a Communal Society this division of labour will

be recognized as impossible in a piece of goods of which the art of design formed an integral

part, and that art itself will only be exercised in answer to an undoubted and imperative demand

of the public; there will be no occasion to force a demand for it.

As to the substantive art that must always be on the surface the product of individual labour and

skill, although at bottom it is a social product as much as or even more than any other

production; since the capacity of the most original artist or author is really the result of tradition,

and his work is the expression of a long social development of tendencies concentrated in the

special individual.

A question may occur to some as to the probable future of the races at present outside

civilization. To us it seems that the best fate that can befall them is that they should develope

(sic) themselves from their present condition, uninterfered with by the incongruities of

civilization. Those of them will be the happiest who can hold civilization aloof until civilization

itself melts into Socialism, when their own natural development will gradually lead them into

absorption in the great ocean of universal social life.

1.The mediæval painters naïvely accept this position -- eg., in representing the life of a saint of

the second century, they dress the characters in a costume but little altered from that of their own

period; and it is worth noting that they gave up the attempt at archeology (sic) altogether with the

more familiar characters -- a carpenter or blacksmith will be just the craftsman that they had

before their eyes every day; whereas the emperors, giants, and so forth, they do try to clothe in

imaginative raiment. A further illustration may be given in the art of music: works such as

Weber's der Freischutz or Wagner's Meister-singers, which seem to embody the spirit of past

ages, nevertheless are in themselves thoroughly modern

Chapter 23 - Socialism Triumphant [Part 2]

It remains to say something on the religious and ethical basis of which the life of Communal

Society may be called an expression, although from another aspect the religion may be said to be

an expression of that life; the two together forming an harmonious whole.

The word religion has been, and is still in most minds, connected with supernatural beliefs, and

consequently the use of the word has been attacked as unjustifiable where this element is absent.

But, as we shall proceed to show in a few words, this is rather accessory to it than essential.

In the first instance religion had for its object the continuance and glory of the kinship -- Society;

whether as clan, tribe, or people, ancestor worship forming the leading feature in its early phases.

That in such an epoch religion should have been connected with what we now call superstition

was inevitable, since at that time no distinction was drawn between the human and any other

form of existence, whether in animal life or in inanimate matters, all being alike considered

conscious and intelligent.

Consequently, with the development of material civilization from the domination of things by

persons to that of persons by things, and the consequent falling asunder of Society into two

classes, a possessing and dominating class, and a non-possessing and dominated one, arose a

condition of Society which gave leisure to the possessing or slave-holding class, the result of

which was a possibility of observation and reflection amongst the upper class. As a consequence

of this a process of reflection arose among this class which distinguished man as a conscious

being from the rest of nature. From this again arose a dual conception of things: on the one hand

was man, which was familiar and known, on the other nature, which was mysterious and

relatively unknown. In nature itself grew a further distinction between its visible objects now

regarded as unconscious things, and a supposed motive power which acted on them from behind,

which was conceived of as manlike in character, but above mankind in knowledge and power,

and no longer a part of the things themselves, but without them, and moving and controlling

them.

Another set of dual conceptions arose along with this, firstly the distinction between the

individual and Society, and secondly within the individual the distinction between the soul and

the body. Religion now became definitely supernatural, and at last superstitious, as far as the

cultured class was concerned, since they had gradually lost their old habit of belief in it.

At this stage there arose a conflict not only of belief but also of ethical conceptions; the

ceremonies and customs based on the earlier ideas, on a nature composed of beings who were all

conscious, became meaningless and in many cases repulsive to the advanced minds of the epoch;

hence arose a system of esoteric explanation and the Mysteries(1)

. An importance began to be

attached to the idea of a future life for the individual soul, which had nothing in common with

the old idea of a scarcely broken existence, founded not on any positive doctrine, but on the

impossibility of an existing being conceiving of its non-existence; an idea naively expressed, for

instance, in the burial ceremonies of all early races, in which food, horses, arms, etc., are buried

with the dead man as a provision for his journey to the unknown country. These ideas, and the

doctrines and ceremonies embodying them, grow in number and body as the stream of history

broadens down, till they finally issue in the universal or ethical religions (as opposed to the tribal

or nature-religions) of which Buddhism and Christianity are the great historical examples, and in

which the original ceremonies and their meaning have become fused with each other, and with

the new ethics of these religions, and are supposed to express these ethics more or less

symbolically. An illustration of what has here been said may be found in the fusion of the ancient

notions of sacrifices in the doctrine of the Atonement(2)

.

We have said that with the rise of civilization tribal society became divided into classes, owing

to the growth of the individual ownership of property as opposed to its corporate ownership. The

old relations of persons to society were thus destroyed, and with them much of the meaning of

the old ethical ideas. In the tribal society, the responsibility of the individual to the limited

society of which he formed a part was strongly felt, while he recognized no duty outside his

tribe. In the new conception of morality which now arose he had, it is true, duties to all men as a

man, irrespective of the community to which he belonged, but they were vague and could be

evaded or explained away with little disturbance of the conscience; because the central point

round which morality revolved was a spiritual deity who was the source of morality and directly

revealed himself to the individual conscience. These two, the tribal ethics, the responsibility to a

community however limited, and the universal or introspective ethics, or responsibility to a

divinity to whom humanity was but a means of realizing himself, and to whom therefore the

duties of man to man were of secondary importance(3)

-- are the two ethical poles. But though the

tendency was in this direction from the beginnings of civilization, it took historically many

centuries to realize itself, and only reached its final development in Christianity; and has now

under the influence of competitive economics taken the final form of the devil-take-the-hindmost

doctrine and practice of modern society.

As regards the future form of the moral consciousness, we may safely predict that it will be in a

sense a return on a higher level to the ethics of the older society, with the difference that the

limitation of scope to the kinship society in its narrower sense, which was one of the elements of

the dissolution of ancient society, will disappear, and the identification of individual with social

interests will be so complete that any divorce between the two will be inconceivable to the

average man.

We may say in conclusion that this new ethic is no longer a mere theoretical speculation, but that

many thousands of lives are already under its inspiration. Its first great popular manifestation

was given in the heroic devotion of the working-classes of Paris in the Commune of 1871 to the

idea of true and universal freedom, which was carried on by the no less complete devotion of the

little band of Russian revolutionists who made so little account of their individual lives in their

engrossing passion for the general life of humanity.

Everywhere the same feeling is spreading, and even in England, the chosen home of bourgeois

bureaucracy, which, with the instinctive cunning of a business country, gives every opportunity

to well-to-do persons for forgetting the general welfare in that of the individual, it is getting more

irrepressible every day. The wave of ethical feeling is no doubt the result of the development of

the class struggle now rapidly approaching to the crisis which will abolish all classes: in fact, the

mere hope, ever growing nearer to realisation, of an economical change which will make life

easy and refined for all, is what has made this ethical idea possible, as the habits which the new

economical system will engender will make any other form of ethics inconceivable: since once

for all change in the economical system of society must always be accompanied by fresh ethical

ideas.

We may be asked, since we have been putting forward the doctrine of evolution throughout these

chapters, what Socialism in its turn will evolve. We can only answer that Socialism denies the

finality of human progress, and that any system of which we can now conceive of as Socialism

must necessarily give way to a new development of society. But that development is necessarily

hidden from us by the unfinished struggle in which we live, in which for us the supreme goal is

the Socialism we have been putting forward. Nor do we repine at this limitation of our insight;

that goal is sublime and beautiful enough which promises to us the elevation of the whole of the

people to a level of intelligent happiness and pleasurable energy, which at present is reached, if

at all, only by a chosen few at the expense of the misery and degradation of the greater part of

mankind; and even by those few, is held on such a precarious tenure that it is to them little better

than a pleasant dream disturbed by fantastic fears which have their birth from the terribly real

sufferings of the ordinary life of the masses on whom they live.

1. The mysteries were nothing but a practice of the ancient rude ceremonies now treated as

revelations to certain privileged persons of this hidden meaning which could not be understood

by the vulgar: that is, people began to assume that the ancient rude and sometimes coarse

ceremonies (belief in which directly as explanations of natural events now appeared to them

incredible) wrapped up mystical meanings in an allegorical manner; eg., a simple sun-myth

would be turned into an allegory of the soul and the divinity, -- their relative dealings with a

present and future life back

.

2. See article 'Sacrifice' in the 'Encyclopxdia Britannica' (9th Edition), by Professor Robertson

Smith back

.

3. 'Morality, thou dreadful bane, What tens of thousands thou hast slain!'